ASX-listed junior explorer Aruma Resources has sniffed out a trio of encouraging historical shallow gold hits returned from drilling carried out almost a quarter of a century ago at its Scotia South gold project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region. The intercepts were 7m at an average grade of 2.71 grams per tonne gold from 36m including 5m at 3.48 g/t, 3m going at 3.02 g/t from 9m and 1m at 5.6 g/t from 51m down-hole.
The Perth-based company uncovered the intersections in its review of past datasets generated by Pan Australian Exploration’s reverse circulation drilling work in the second half of the 1990s.
Aruma says the old drill results have now enabled it to identify three priority targets for its maiden RC drilling program at Scotia South comprising about 30 holes totalling 3,000m. The program is slated to kick off in the current quarter.
According to the company, Scotia South was only partially drill tested for gold by Pan Australian, which delineated soil anomalies that Aruma says are coincident with the target area for its first phase of drilling.
Aruma also intends undertaking geophysical and geochemical surveying as well as mapping and soil sampling to help pinpoint the drill targets.
Management says the historical drilling data shows the previous geochemical work done to trace the gold anomalies was effective and backs up Aruma’s exploration model for the project.
Its 222-square-kilometre Scotia South project area about 60km south of Norseman is interpreted to lie some 30km along strike of the recent high-grade Scotia gold discoveries by ASX-listed joint venture partners Pantoro Limited and Tulla Resources.
The JV’s latest published inferred and indicated near-surface resource for its multi-deposit Scotia project, towards the southern end of the Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt, stands at 3.07 million tonnes grading an average 2.8 g/t for 280,000 ounces of contained gold.
In addition, the JV has placed an inferred and indicated underground resource estimate on Scotia that comes in at 1.06Mt at an impressive grade averaging 5.2 g/t for 180,000oz of contained gold.
One of the new Scotia discoveries occurs in the Noganyer sedimentary iron formation that the JV says has consistently been host to economic and often high-grade gold mineralisation extracted from multiple open pits in the Norseman region.
Paul Cmrlec, managing director of the JV operator Pantoro, which has been pumping out a slew of high-grade drill intercepts from Scotia in recent times, said: “The largely untapped prospectivity of the Scotia mining centre has been consistently supported through extension of known deposits, and discovery of previously untested high-grade mineralisation at Green Lantern, Panda and now within the sedimentary iron formation on the eastern edge of the project area. Our geologists are excited by the new discoveries, and it is clear that we don’t yet have a handle on just how big the Scotia Mining Centre may ultimately be when the requisite amount of exploration in the area has been completed.”
Given the Pantoro-Tulla exploration success around Norseman over the past 18 months, gold market watchers will no doubt be keeping an eye on Aruma’s progress and initial results from new drilling at Scotia South.
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By Matt Birney
