AC Drilling Unveils 2.5km Long Gold Corridor
Gateway Mining Limited (ASX:GML) has identified a major new gold exploration opportunity within its 100%-owned 1,000 sq. km Gidgee Gold Project in Western Australia after receiving the results of a systematic program of air-core drilling designed to test the immediate southern extension to the Achilles Target Area.
The air-core drilling consisted of a grid-based program, drilled to blade refusal (top of fresh rock) on a nominal 200m x 40m spacing. This programme covered approximately 1.4km of strike of the southern continuation of the Achilles structural zone, where recent RC drilling by Gateway has continued to extend near-surface mineralisation north of the historical Rosie open pit.
The results from the air-core program are considered to be highly significant in the context of Gateway’s overall exploration strategy at the Gidgee Project. They have defined a series of coherent, high-order oxide and bedrock gold anomalies extending over a strike length of 1.4km, with the zone remaining open for a further 2.5km to the south beyond this new drilling, to the edge of Gateway’s tenure.
A total of 305 holes were drilled for 15,016m. Samples were taken as nominal 4m composites. Drilling was designed to test the highly prospective thrust fault along the margin of the Montague Granodiorite as well as the interpreted major shear zones within the western mafic volcanic sequence that host mineralisation at the Caledonian pit and the Dandelion group of historical workings.
Managing Director, Peter Langworthy, said the strength and coherent nature of the anomalies and their position relative to significant cross-cutting structures has elevated the importance of this area as a significant exploration target at Gidgee, alongside the 1.5km long North West Margin area between the Montague-Boulder and Whistler deposit which is a priority focus for RC and diamond drilling.
“We are encouraged and excited by the results of our first major air-core program targeting a new area at the Gidgee Project, with the area south of the historical Rosie Pit and Achilles Oxide Target emerging as a very significant new exploration opportunity,” Mr Langworthy said.
“Seeing assay results as high 16g/t for this relatively early stage of air-core drilling is always exciting, but of greater importance is the continuity and strength of the oxide and primary gold anomalism and the logical correlation of the geology and structures across the 1.4km strike extent.
“The position of the cross-cutting structures within the Montague Granodiorite is a highly favourable location for major gold deposits to form. What we are seeing in the Achilles Gold Corridor is a favourable coincidence of geological structures with high-order gold anomalism, which suggests that we could be in the early discovery stages of a major new gold system.
“The correlation with significant high-grade historical results across the area is quite remarkable, as is the way this trend lines up with the shallow oxide mineralisation defined to the north at Achilles. This is an area that clearly warrants further work, and we are looking forward to progressing additional exploration including some initial reconnaissance RC drilling followed later by in-fill air-core drilling to prioritise areas for RC and diamond target drilling.
“It’s still relatively early days for the Achilles Gold Corridor, but we see a big opportunity emerging there that could well end up ranking a close second in priority behind the North West Margin, where we are working to in-fill the 1.5km area between our two cornerstone deposits. Once again, this reinforces the multi-pronged opportunity we have at Gidgee and the enormous potential to discover major new gold deposits. “As a result of the recent resurgence in Gold, there is currently an industry wide surge in samples submitted to commercial assay laboratories. This has caused delays and the turnaround on the assays from the recent RC programme has been frustratingly slow. These results will be released as soon as they come to hand.”
