Augustus strikes gold in opening WA Leonora swing

Augustus Minerals has struck paydirt in a first-ever drilling campaign at its Clifton East prospect north of Leonora in Western Australia, returning a swag of shallow intersections at the untouched gold ground.

The company’s first tilt at the prospect delivered several solid hits, including a 16-metre intercept grading 1.46 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 28m and a thicker 32-metre hit running 0.9g/t from just 40m downhole, featuring a higher-grade 4-metre core at 2.72g/t gold. 

The promising results came from an 11-hole, 1100m maiden reverse circulation (RC) program at Clifton East, which forms part of the company’s broader Music Well gold project. 

Augustus says the results from 4m composites will now be combed for more accurate 1m breakdowns from the best hits, which may serve to sharpen up the grades within the broader intercepts.

From a geological perspective, the company says the drilling has confirmed the area is dominated by granites of the Bundarra Batholith laced with sanukitoid signatures. Management believes this offers a new regional exploration perspective in the Yilgarn Craton, with many of the largest gold camps occurring adjacent to these high-magnesium sanukitoid granites.

Augustus says the geological setting and geochemistry at Clifton East in particular show similarities to the Golden Cities group of deposits, a 1.4-million-ounce gold system 50km north of Kalgoorlie, also hosted within a sanukitoid-type mafic granitoid. 

The drill bit also intersected lamprophyre dykes, which the company describes as important indicators of gold-fertile tectonic and mantle conditions, suggesting the geological plumbing of the area has deep gold-carrying roots.

Notably, the drilling program only tested a 350m section of a 1.2km-long gold-in-soil and high-grade rock chip anomaly, leaving plenty of the trend untouched. 

Augustus Minerals general manager exploration Andrew Ford said: "These early indications suggest the potential for a broader mineralised system, both at Clifton East and across the wider Music Well project, which hosts several undrilled targets supported by high-grade rock chip samples." 

The Music Well project sits 35km north of Leonora in WA’s gold-rich Leonora-Laverton Greenstone Belt, a region that hosts a total gold endowment of more than 28 million ounces. The project is surrounded by a conga line of major operations, including Vault Minerals’ Darlot and King of the Hills mines and Northern Star’s Thunderbox operation.

Despite the region's popularity, Augustus has been able to amass more than 1240 square kilometres of tenure in the district, where regional fault systems are interpreted to channel mineralising fluids from neighbouring gold camps into its ground.

Beyond Clifton East, the target pipeline at Music Well includes soil anomaly extensions at the company’s Dodds and St Patricks prospects, as well as nugget trends at its Golden Dingo target that warrant closer inspection.

For a first pass at a new prospect, the unearthing of wide zones of gold mineralisation is a solid result. 

Although the drilling may have only just scratched the surface of a 1.2km-long anomaly, the company’s geological theory and address are starting to look more and more prospective.

If they can define some higher-grade cores within the broad envelopes already identified, it will give the company a much clearer picture for planning its next round of deeper drilling.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au