In the small-capped ASX exploration space “ounce to the tonne dirt” is always going to get the attention of the market meerkats and Astral Resources proved to be no exception last week. Its stock ran 36 per cent from 12.5c to 17c after it jagged a 3m drill intersection going a whopping 5.7 ounces to the tonne gold - or 177 grams per tonne - at its Feysville gold project in WA.
In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits we examine that drill hit which was contained within a broader 25m drill intersection grading a stellar 24.3g/t gold from 68m.
We also take a look at some other interesting drill hits from last week by Core Lithium at its Shoobridge Gold gold-lithium project in the NT and Arika Resources’ Yundamindra project in WA.
So, let’s dive in….
Kamperman prospect- Feysville gold project, WA.
Gold project
Astral Resources has jagged two impressive runs of gold mineralisation in a single reverse circulation (RC) drill-hole. The headline hit of 25m at 24.3g/t gold from 68m includes another 1m intersection grading 28g/t gold from 69m and also 3m at a whopping 177g/t gold, or 5.7 ounces to the tonne if you want to really dial up the rhetoric, from 74m.
That intercept was preceded in the same hole by a relatively shallow run of 12m at 7.26g/t gold from 23m, including 1m at 16.5g/t gold from 24m and 1m at over an ounce to the tonne at 39.7g/t gold from 27m.
Astral proposes twinning the headline hole with a diamond drillhole to confirm the high-grade result and to better understand the structural controls and orientation of the high-grade shoot to inform future drill targeting.
The latest batch of results represent the first 20 holes for 2580m of a 31-hole, 3834m in-fill and extensional drilling program at Astral’s Kamperman prospect, one of a number of prospects in the company’s 100 per cent-owned Feysville gold project which sits about 14km south of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
A second hole collared 40m further east from the headline hole produced 12m at 1.96g/t gold from 20m and a separate 5m at 1.25g/t gold from 58m. Both of those intercepts wire-frame together nicely with the headline duo of big hits sitting just 33m further down-dip (i.e., westwards).
Both of the foregoing holes were designed to in-fill the northern end of the Kamperman prospect and to scout for potential north-plunging mineralisation indicated by two previous intercepts of 14m at 1.44g/t gold from 54m and 12m at 1.99g/t gold from 78m.
In September last year, an RC drill-hole which had been drilled into the northern zone of Kamperman nailed a heady 2m at 188g/t gold from 77m depth as part of a broader zone of mineralisation associated with a sheared lithological contact between ultramafic and feldspar porphyry units.
The object of the latest 31-hole in-fill and extensional RC program is twofold – to drill a number of in-fill, up-dip and down-dip holes to test the current modelled mineralisation wireframes and to extend the strike length of the known mineralisation.
The interpreted section through the headline drillhole and its two big hit intercepts reveals a very high-grade shoot enclosed within the broader 25m at 24.3g/t gold from 68m.
The recent RC drilling program at Kamperman was completed in early October and additional assay results that will no doubt be highly anticipated by the market are expected from in-fill drilling in the southern zone.
Astral’s Feysville gold project lies about 14km south of KCGM’s revered Super Pit in Kalgoorlie, halfway between Kambalda and Kalgoorlie in WA’s renowned and highly prospective north/north-west trending 800km-long Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt.
Significant gold and nickel mineralisation occurs throughout the belt, including world-class deposits such as Northern Star’s Golden Mile super pit in Kalgoorlie and Gold Fields’ St Ives gold mine south of Kambalda.
The project contains a number of other prospects in addition to Kamperman at various stages of advancement. They include Empire Rose, Ethereal, Hyperno, Rogan Josh, Saintly, Delray, Rosina and Think Big, among others.
Astral has long viewed the Kamperman prospect as hosting multiple controlling structures that warrant further investigation.
Between late 2022 and mid-January last year, the company kicked off the first drilling in more than three years at Feysville with a 9-hole, 1500m diamond drill program at Think Big which sits about 5km to the south-east of Kamperman. Race goers will note most of Astral’s prospects are named after Melbourne Cup winners. Most were named by former Kalgoorlie mining identity and occasional raconteur John Jones when he had contract of the ground in a different entity some years ago. Jones is no stranger to the racetrack.
The aim of the initial program was to identify extension potential at Think Big which then contained a combined inferred and indicated mineral resource of 3 million tonnes at 1.3g/t gold for 116,000 ounces of contained gold.
Astral believes Think Big could be a foundational prospect for the Feysville project to become a supplementary feed-source for a future operation based on its flagship Mandilla gold project, 70km south of Kalgoorlie.
The bigger Mandilla project resource has long been Astral’s primary focus of advanced development for which, by the end of December 2022, the company had already produced its fourth mineral resource estimate of 30 million tonnes at 1.1g/t gold for 1.03 million ounces of the precious metal.
However, when work began on the Think Big prospect in the Feysville project at the end of 2022, the company’s geologists were drawn to the ultramafic unit in the hanging wall which had only been intersected in drilling twice before. On both occasions visible gold was encountered.
Four diamond drillholes were completed on three prospects prior to the 2022 Christmas break at Ethereal, Hyperno and Rogan Josh, with 750m of additional diamond work pending at the Think Big, Rosina, Michelangelo and Kamperman prospects.
The proposed drilling at Kamperman was designed – among other objectives - to chase up a historical previous intercept which had jagged 13m at 9.06g/t gold from 24m to bottom-of-hole.
By the end of the program, nine diamond holes had been completed across nine prospects at Feysville for a total of about 1412m and 26 RC holes for 2446m.
Among results released in March last year from other prospects, a hole at Kamperman intersected 10m at 4.57g/t gold from 148m from a never-before tested sheared ultramafic/dacitic porphyry association.
By September 2023, Kamperman was fast becoming a tantalising exploration target in its own right, with each line of relatively wide-spaced RC drilling returning significant high-grade assay results which confirm Kamperman’s mineralisation extends over a 240m strike length which still remains open to the north and south.
Eight RC holes were drilled at Kamperman for 1110m, with four sections completed at about 80m spacings.
The results from four lines of drilling across Kamperman returned a number of significant intercepts, including 4m at 94.8g/t gold, 21m at 4.2g/t gold, 35m at 2.2g/t gold and 5m at 5.9g/t gold.
The results of the latest drilling, along with a succession of encouraging responses from the September work and other previous responses, further reinforce Kamperman’s potential to contribute to the Feysville project.
Astral does however have a Melbourne Cup field of potential candidates capable of taking line honours at the project and the ultimate winner may even still be lurking at depth somewhere.
One thing seems certain however and that is that the stable seems filled with quality runners.
Shoobridge Project - NT
Gold and Lithium
Core Lithium has pulled further high-grade gold hits in the final suite of results from RC drilling at its Shoobridge gold-lithium project in Australia’s Northern territory. Latest big hits are 12m grading 2.93g/t gold from 56m, including 6m going 5.12g/t gold from 62m which also includes 1m at 19.76g/t gold from 65m in quartz.
The results represent the final assays to be returned from a program of 28 RC drill holes for 3535m put into Shoobridge through July and August in a program to follow-up some intriguing anomalous auger-soil gold and lithium geochemistry across five prospect areas.
Other good numbers include a second 4m hole assaying 3.73g/t gold from 45m, including 1m running 12.62g/t gold from 48m.
Core acquired the Shoobridge project from Newmont in 2022. The project and surrounding areas have been intensely explored and are subject to small-scale mining for gold, uranium, lead and copper.
Tin and tantalum have also been mined from pegmatites in the Tipperary pegmatite field intermittently since the 1880’s, although the project has never been explored for lithium which is commonly found around both tin and tantalum.
Core’s recent drilling was designed to follow-up the company’s 1700-sample auger-soil geochemical reconnaissance exploration undertaken last year over three target areas.
Both lithium and gold were analysed in the same sample suite and cover identical areas which can be overlain one upon the other.
The results of the geochemical program revealed lithium anomalism along the trend of and parallel to the historical Barretts and Old Company tin-tantalum workings.
Interestingly, the analyses also outline a broad zone of gold anomalism up to 2234ppb gold extending further south from Mt. Shoobridge along the trend of the historical gold workings, in the northern part of the geochemical sampling area.
Overall, the anomalism in both gold and lithium is centred roughly on China Hill, which lies between the Old Company prospect in the north and Barretts, near the southern end of the sample grid.
On a casual first glance, the gridded imagery of the geochemical soil results for both elements appears to be mainly coincident, but closer examination reveals the gold trend appears to be sandwiched between the two main lithium trends, with both element trends parallel and striking 342o (north/north-west).
The gridded and imaged geochemical data shows elevated gold responses occur in three distinct clusters. The smallest anomaly lies in the northern arm of the grid at Mt. Shoobridge, north of Old Company, while the main anomaly is centred between Old Company and China Hill. The third and medium-sized anomaly sits in the southern third of the grid, east of Barretts.
All three high-value geochemical targets are conjoined by a continuous imaged envelope of lower grade gold values which define a distinct gold-anomalous zone down the centre of the auger sampling grid.
This is confirmed by regular data contouring which depicts a gold envelope at a 10ppb gold contour value continuously enclosing the entire belt of workings and scattered diggings, along a strike distance of about 3950m and up to 1340m wide across its widest dimension, drawn through the China Hill – Halls Creek location.
The gold at Shoobridge is hosted within quartz veins. Quartz is commonly accompanied by sulphide mineralisation, including pyrite and arsenopyrite, which are commonly observed near gold-bearing veins and is exemplified by the 19.76g/t gold high value hit in the headline drill-hole.
The Mount Shoobridge gold prospect lies just 7km west of Agnico Eagle Mines’ Cosmo Deeps gold mine, about 10km off the main Stuart Highway and about 60km from the Pine Creek township.
The surrounding region also hosts other multi-million ounce deposits, including the closed Cosmo Howley operation with more than 2 million ounces gold, Hayes Creek with 1.1 million ounces of gold and Union Reefs operation with 2.1 million ounces of gold.
Core’s gold discovery at Shoobridge presents it with a strategic opportunity beyond its priority Finniss lithium project and processing plant which is located about 55km north-west of Adelaide River and 160km by road north of Shoobridge.
While focussing on the timing of a strategic restart for its Finniss lithium project, Core has a real opportunity to add gold to its armoury at a time when gold is touching all time highs.
Caption - Arika Resources’ final hole of the program intercepted 14m at 15.48g/t gold from 46m, including the depicted gold panned from the 51 - 53m interval which assayed 101.50g/t gold.
Arika Resources
Pennyweight Point - Yundamindra gold project - WA
Gold
Arika Resources has tabled some rolled gold results in the final suite of assays from the recently completed maiden RC drilling campaign at its Pennyweight Point prospect. The best numbers were in the final hole of the program at 14m averaging 15.48 g/t gold from 46m, including 9m at 23.98g/t gold from 48m and 2m at a stunning 101.50g/t gold from 51m.
That solid run was accompanied by consistently thick runs of gold in other holes drilled in the final stages of the campaign, including the next best 33m hit at 3.35g/t gold from 22m; 33m going 2.63g/t gold from 85m; 36m running 2.01g/t gold from 73m and 35m assaying 1.46g/t gold from 100m.
Arika’s Pennyweight Point prospect falls within the company’s Yundamindra gold project, about 65km south-west of Laverton in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields.
The latest results further confirm the continuity, consistency and quality of intercepts seen in the previous nine holes drilled at Pennyweight Point and reported last month.
The best three holes from that crop of nine holes followed in a similar vein to the first hole in the program, which was not only the first drilling in over 10 years at the prospect but also proved to be the company’s longest and best grade intercept at 30m grading 3.86g/t gold from 89m
The best three intercepts from those nine holes include 30m at 2.36g/t gold from 64m; 23m at 2.84g/t gold from 53m and 13m at 2.60g/t gold from 82m.
The majority of holes in the latest program exhibit thick zones of significant gold mineralisation in both near-surface oxide/supergene zones and also from fresh rock, with several holes reporting exceptional results up to multi-ounce intervals.
In a remarkably successful outcome for a maiden program comprising only 23 RC holes for a modest total metreage of 2,238m, the drilling has validated and extended historical intersections in the near surface oxide/supergene zone.
Additionally, the program has already defined a significant zone of high-grade bedrock gold mineralisation over a strike of about 150m hosted by a well-defined altered and quartz-veined shear zone which extends to depth in fresh basaltic rock and remains open along strike and at depth.
Assay results from the 11 drill holes returned to date for the Pennyweight Point prospect, including the outstanding intercept of 30m at 3.86g/t gold from 90m, all lie within the recognised high-grade Southern Shoot and the latest intercepts correlate with historical drilling results, lending solid validation and encouragement for future drilling.
The second exceptional 30m intercept at 2.36g/t gold referred to previously lies outside the envelope of historically interpreted mineralisation at depth, which points to further scale potential at depth and down-plunge.
Similarly, the previously mentioned high-grade intercept of 13m at 2.60g/t gold also confirms and validates historical data noted in previous adjacent drillholes.
Arika says that while Pennyweight Point has been subject to significant historical drilling, most of it was undertaken with an air-core drill rig between 12 and 40 years ago and the majority of drill holes terminate at shallow depths in the 50 to 60m depth range and rarely penetrate fresh rock.
Arika sees a significant opportunity in these results and its decision to progress into fresh rock has already been justified by the results from the latest program which has exposed the secret below, namely that significant high-grade mineralisation remains open at depth, down-plunge and along strike.
The Yundamindra project currently comprises nine historical prospects which demonstrate high-grade historical production before 1970, amounting to 74,000 tonnes at a serious 19.3g/t gold for about 45,000 ounces of gold.
Assays have now been submitted for 11 holes drilled at Pennyweight Point and are still pending.
With almost crazy high prices, gold is well and truly back in vogue now and Arika, Core and Astral all appear to have plenty of it. And with two or more wars going on right now that don’t look like ending anytime soon, the traditional safe haven of gold may even have more legs left in it!
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
