Brightstar to drill test historic mining area

Brightstar Resources has locked in an air-core drill rig to test a grab bag of high-quality targets at its Brightstar South gold project located approximately 40 kilometres southeast of Laverton in WA. Although the target areas have shown significant anomalism, giving up over 5,000 ounces of gold historically, the prospects have inexplicably, never been run to ground with modern exploratory drilling.

Approximately 2,000m of air-core drilling is expected to be ploughed in over the company’s Rowena, Jubilee and Sailor Prince prospects within the Brightstar South region of the Laverton gold belt.

Historical records from the Sailor Prince prospect area show 4,924 ounces of gold was mined up to the 1930’s. The area consists of several historic mine shafts that were mined between 1898 and 1938 using non-mechanical means. Brightstar says modern exploration in the immediate area looks to be limited to surface geochemistry in addition to a small, shallow RC drill program consisting of 9 holes back in 1995.

The historic RC drilling data from Sailor Prince was not captured digitally or submitted to the department of mines and consequently the effectiveness of drilling is impossible to gauge according to the company.

Jubilee sits adjacent to the Edinburgh Castle prospect, located a few kilometres northwest of Sailor Prince. The area was discovered by a prospector who uncovered approximately 150 ounces of in situ gold that the company says may indicate a more proximal origin for the gold mineralisation.

The Rowena project area historically produced 110 ounces of alluvial gold from vertical depths of 0 to 8 metres. Historical mining shafts have also been reported in the area with records indicating that between 100 to 200 ounces of gold were retrieved during 1898 and 1930.

Air-core drilling is designed to develop an anomaly map of the Brightstar South gold project that the company aims to investigate in conjunction with aeromagnetic interpretations. Multi element pathfinder assays will be undertaken to help identify anomalies that may coincide with structural pathways.

BrightStar Resource’s Managing Director, Bill Hobba said: “The historic records of the area and prospecting indicate opportunities for high grade gold mineralisation that has not been effectively tested by modern exploration. In many cases despite being previously owned by exploration companies these projects have suffered from a lack of funding by being overshadowed by other projects. Brightstar is in a position to provide these projects with effective modern exploration to assess any value in the targets.”

With a flurry of underexplored historical gold mines littered around its southern tenure, Brightstar will no doubt be looking forward to getting its teeth stuck into the company’s maiden drill campaign as it attempts to locate the source of mineralisation in the area.

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