Meeka Metals says a $180,000 WA Government grant is a glowing endorsement for its 100 per cent-owned “kilometre-scale”, gold-rich Circle Valley project near Esperance in Western Australia’s deep south.
The company is set to use the cash, which it has secured as part of the State’s exploration incentive scheme (EIS), for a new drill program after a previous campaign at its Circle Valley project threw up impressive gold drill hits as high as 16m at 1.5 grams per tonne from 36m including a 4m thick chunk at 3.89g/t. The co-funded drilling is scheduled to begin in the second half of this year.
Other noteworthy gold drill intersections at Circle Valley are 8m at 2.79g/t from 124m including 4m at 5.15g/t, 8m at 1.45g/t from 121m including a 4m chunk going 2.27g/t, 12m at 1.42g/t from 36m including 1m at 12.3g/t, 5m going 2.06g/t from 25m including 2m at 4g/t and 5m at 1.55g/t from 42m including 1m grading a solid 6.63g/t.
They are the type of results that Meeka will now be hoping to at least replicate. Management says the past hits are from a target called Anomaly A, within the Circle Valley project – an area of heavy structural deformation visible on geophysical data nestled between the Albany Fraser Mobile Belt in the south and the Northern Foreland in the north.
And Circle Valley is not a one trick pony, with the Fenceline prospect, 10km north-east of Anomaly A, also throwing up some gold in drilling, with assays coming back as high as 4m at 2.97g/t from 92m. Notably, that result is from the only hole drilled at Fenceline, leaving plenty of potential in the ground for future news flow.
Meeka Metals managing director Tim Davidson said: “The EIS application process is competitive and the award confirms the strong technical merits of the project, the work the team have completed to date and the future work that will be supported by this EIS grant. Planning for the EIS supported Circle Valley program will commence after completion of the Mineral Resource updates for the Murchison Gold Project DFS in the coming weeks.”
While Circle Valley caught the attention of the State Government’s grants team, Meeka is charging ahead with another gold project – in WA’s Murchison region where it is on the verge of releasing a mineral resource update for its gold project of the same name.
Meeka’s 100 per cent-owned Murchison gold project covers the northern extent of the highly-prospective Mount Magnet and Youanmi shear zones in the prolific Murchison goldfields.
The project already hosts a mineral resource of 1.2 million ounces of gold on a granted mining lease and now, with exploration mapping uncovering a 2km shear zone coincident with historic shafts and outcropping quartz veins, Meeka is hoping to pump up that number.
Interestingly, a historic diamond hole near one of the shafts on the shear zone came back with 8m grading a huge 21.99g/t gold and 1.6m going 27.48g/t gold, proving those old miners were onto a good thing.
The workup of the Murchison area will be reasonably simple for Meeka . The release of its Murchison gold project feasibility study in July last year outlined a straightforward development strategy delivering gold production of 663,000 ounces during an initial 9.3-year project.
But all eyes will be on Circle Valley this winter as Meeka preps the drill bit to dig some metres and get assays to the market. With a vote of confidence and a cash injection from the State Government – it is interesting times ahead.
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By Andrew Duffy
