Hits High-Grade Gold At Benalla Project And Discovers New Structural Trend
The share price of Golden Mile Resources (ASX:G88) has jumped by over 101% after aircore drilling at the Wanghi Prospect, within the Benalla Project in Western Australia, has intersected a wide zone of high-grade gold mineralisation.
Benalla is part of the company’s Leonora Gold Project located ~230km north of Kalgoorlie.
The successful hits include:
- 33m @ 1.60g/t Au from 48m, including 16m at 2.95g/t Au from 61m;
- 3m @ 2.74g/t Au from 15m; 4m @ 0.51g/t Au from 36m.
Drilling began in late February with a high impact aircore (AC) programme designed to test extensions of previous broad, shallow high grade gold intersections at targets BGT1-4, where highlights included 12m @ 1.03g/t Au from 40m including4m at 2.52g/t Au; 8m @ 1.28g/t Au from 28m; 4m @ 3.15 g/t Au from 12m and16m @ 1.05 g/t Au; and 16m @ 0.81 g/t Au from 16m.
Managing Director, James Merrillees, said the company was encouraged by the early results coming out of Benalla, including the Wanghi prospect.
“These are exciting results for the Company. We intersected further wide zones of strong gold mineralisation in fresh rock at Wanghi, and the recognition of important structures controlling mineralisation provides an important new targeting tool for the follow up RC drilling planned next month,” Mr Merrillees said.
“The plus 10-gram gold intersection in hole BTAC082 at Wanghi also points to the potential for high-grade in the system and is further endorsement of our belief in Benalla to host a meaningful gold system immediately along strike from KIN Mining’s 1.15Moz Cardinia Gold Project.
“With assay results received for only six out of a total of 81 holes drilled to date we are looking forward to a period of strong news flow over the coming months.”
To date the company has drilled a total of 3,000m of AC drilling in 81 holes of an approximately 3,500m program planned across the Benalla Project with a further three -4 days of drilling remaining.
Mr Merrillees said that given the slower than average turnaround times at laboratories in Western Australia the company placed a ‘rush’ order on six holes which were drilled to test the Wanghi Prospect, defined by the wide, high-grade zone of gold mineralisation.
The company currently has more than 1,000 samples at the laboratory in Perth with results anticipated in the coming weeks.
Geological mapping by the company’s geologists at Wanghi has identified a previously unrecognised structural trend controlling gold mineralisation in the area.
This structural zone dips steeply toward the northwest, which is oblique to the direction of drilling completed to date at Wanghi where the holes have been drilled towards the southwest, perpendicular to geochemical anomalies (refer Figure 3).
This oblique relationship explains the patchy gold intersected in lines to the north and south of the mineralised intersections in holes BTAC082 and BTAC187 and will be used to better plan future drill holes to test the Wanghi mineralised system.
The company has also received results from the resampling of significant intersections from the 2020 programme
The original results were reported from four metre composites which have now been resampled on one metre intervals to examine the potential for high-grade zones, as well as any bias introduced by the presence of coarse ‘nuggety’ gold.
These results confirm the original intersections and include several previously unrecognised high-grade zones including: 4m @3.86 g/t Au from 28m. This new result compares favourably with the intersection in the four metre composites of 4m @ 3.15 g/t Au from 28m and includes a high-grade zone of 1m @ 10.6g/t Au.
A reverse circulation (RC) drilling programme is now planned to commence after the Easter break to test the newly identified structural zone at Wanghi as well as several other prospects at Benalla including any defined by upcoming results from the current AC programme.
