Aurum Resources has launched a 5,000 metre drilling assault at its Penny South project in WA targeting structural anomalies that bear similarities to the nearby, high grade Ramelius Resources’ owned Penny West and Penny North gold projects. The Penny West deposit produced 154,000 tonnes at 18.0 grams per tonne for 89,000 ounces gold in the 1990’s and Aurum plans to sink 18 holes into its project attempting to home in on the most prospective areas of the tenure following up earlier work.
Penny South sits adjacent to and on the same shear structure as the Penny North deposit which was only recently discovered by Spectrum Resources in 2019. Now owned by Ramelius Resources, the Penny North deposit has been aggressively drilled since then and now houses a resource base of 620,000 tonnes grading a stellar 15 g/t gold for 300,000 ounces gold.
Penny West lies a meagre 510 metres to the north of Aurum’s Penny South project. Furthermore, the Penny West sheared contact that hosts the Penny West gold mine continues into the Penny South tenure for a total 2.5 kilometres of strike.
Previous notable drill results at Penny South, amongst a myriad of others, include 2m grading a formidable 33.89 g/t gold from 38m downhole and 4m going 2.1 g/t gold from 92m.
Mineralisation at Penny West and Penny North is contained within very narrow high-grade zones so the company argues the drill targeting must be highly focussed.
Historically Penny South has experienced a decent amount of drilling, however previous holes are generally shallow with an average depth of only around 40m. To put this into context, mineralisation at the Penny North deposit starts at 80m depth and continues to 320m.
The focus for Aurum to date has been on combining high-resolution ground magnetic data with available drill results to create a detailed structural interpretation model. The company enlisted the assistance of Richard Hill, who worked on the Penny North deposit for Spectrum prior to Ramelius taking the reins and provided invaluable insight into the area. Additionally, Margie Hawke, who had a hands-on role in the discovery of the De Grussa copper mine, was contracted to define drill targets along the structurally complex shear system.
Interpretation of high-resolution ground magnetic survey data over the Penny South area also revealed a flurry of other targets that have either gone untested or been poorly tested by historical drilling.
Aurum is in the enviable position of being able to draw from the successful strategies of surrounding and previous explorers allowing it to laser target its drilling efforts. Now it’s a matter of wait and see whether the famous Penny area can produce yet another high-grade offspring.
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By Matt Birney
