Gateway Mining Limited (ASX: GML) has drilled a series of significant shallow high-grade intercepts from Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling completed late last year at the Julias target area, within its 1,000 sq. km Gidgee Gold Project in the Murchison Region of Western Australia.
The results have confirmed the presence of a consistent oxide gold zone over a 500m strike length at Julias which remains completely open to the north and south, significantly elevating this area as a priority focus for follow-up drilling scheduled to commence early next month.
Julias and the neighbouring Flametree target to the south is emerging as a significant shallow, oxide gold zone located immediately to the west of the Montague-Boulder and Evermore Mineral Resources.
Significant shallow mineralisation at Julias has now been intersected in both RC and air-core drilling over a strike length of 1.2km and remains open to the north-east.
Managing Director, Mark Cossom, said drilling at Julias is a key plank in Gateway’s strategy of discovering new gold deposits within 5km of its existing 449,000oz Mineral Resources at Gidgee.
“This is an exciting breakthrough for Gateway which gets the New Year off to a flying start. We now have consistent broad widths of high-grade oxide gold mineralisation in RC drilling over a 500m zone at Julias – and the zone remains completely open to the north and south!” Mr Cossom said.
“The ability to rapidly add shallow oxide ounces is a huge bonus for any emerging gold project, and we appear to have a large oxide system on our hands here at the Julias-Flametree target.
“Considering that we had wide zones of high-grade mineralisation in air-core drilling just 800m to the south at Flametree, this area clearly has huge potential.
“We have a rig booked to start air-core drilling along the entire trend in early February 2022 together with systematic RC drilling along the main zone.
“Our objective will be to in-fill as much of the area as we can and bring it into our resource inventory as quickly as we can, while continuing to scope out the potential of the broader system.
“This bodes extremely well for the year ahead for Gateway. We feel increasingly confident about our exploration targeting at Gidgee, and we are hopeful that this will be the first of several exciting discoveries over the course of the next few months and beyond.”
Key Points:
▪ An 11-hole (891m) drilling programme was designed to follow-up on recent air-core drilling at Julias, with holes drilled on selected 50m and 25m spaced sections to in-fill and confirm the extents of mineralisation previously intersected.
▪ Thick zones of consistently high-grade mineralisation were returned from shallow depths. Significant results include: GRC762: 11m @ 2.6g/t Au from 24m; GRC763: 10m @ 3.0g/t Au from 38m, and 12m @ 2.4g/t Au from 60m; GRC761: 9m @ 3.5g/t Au from 67m; and GRC758: 9m @ 3.4g/t Au from 55m.
This programme focused on the core 500m strike of the Julias target identified through historic Gateway drilling. Importantly, the intersection in hole GRC758 (9m @ 3.4g/t Au from 55m) has demonstrated that mineralisation is open to the north.
Historic exploration to the north was impeded by the presence of a tenement boundary that no longer exists, with the entire strike extent now owned by Gateway. This strike extension corridor forms an exciting extensional target for upcoming air-core drilling.
Air-core drilling by Gateway during the second half of 2021 identified the continuation of mineralisation to the south for over 800m towards the neighbouring Flametree target, with significant results including: GWAC0965: 24m @ 1.4g/t Au from 16m; GWAC0961: 8m @ 1.3g/t Au from 32m; and GWAC0957: 4m @ 1.4g/t Au from 16m,
Core drilling by Gateway at Flametree in 2020 returned significant zones of shallow high-grade mineralisation, with significant results including: GWAC0267: 5m @ 10.4g/t Au from 52m; GWAC0256: 4m @ 3.8g/t Au from 20m; GWAC0257: 9m @ 1.1g/t Au from 17m; GWAC0247: 5m @ 3.8g/t Au from 23m; and GWAC0246: 3m @ 3.5g/t Au from 44m.
This corridor now forms a high-priority target for systematic drilling in early 2022. An extensive air-core drill programme will commence early February 2022 to continue to explore the strike extents of mineralisation to the north and south, with a systematic RC programme to follow in order to complete a regularised drill pattern over the core Julias target area.
For further information please visit: https://www.gatewaymining.com.au/
