Bellevue Gold has made more near surface gold hits that reinforce the high grade nature of the Tribune Lode at its Bellevue gold project, northwest of Leinster in the W.A. Goldfields.
Top results from infill drilling are 5 metres grading 17.3 grams per tonne gold from 46 metres down hole including an impressive 2m @ 40.8g/t gold from 44m, 7m @ 8.2g/t gold from 34m including 4m @ 13.2g/t gold from 36m and 3m @ 12.4 g/t gold from 24m.
The drilling campaign was designed to infill the oxide and shallow broken zone over the JORC resource area to help determine the best development option for accessing underground ore sources at the Tribune lode and beyond.
Bellevue said the results were in line with expectations and support the interpretation of gently southerly plunging ore shoots within the overall northwest trending Tribune mineralised zone.
Earlier this month, Bellevue announced a maiden resource of 1.9 million tonnes grading an exceptional 8.2 grams per tonne gold for 500,000 ounces for the project that is contained in a number of lodes across multiple shear zones.
This includes the Tribune Lode that was discovered by the company just eight months ago.
Bellevue will carry out step-out drilling at Tribune to potentially extend mineralisation along strike and at depth.
The company is also accelerating diamond drilling at the new Viago Lode high grade gold discovery with a second rig already on site and a third rig scheduled to begin work at the start of September.
It will also carry out down-hole electromagnetic surveys on all holes on completion of the 10,000m drilling program.
Recent drilling at Viago returned results including 4.3m at almost 2 ounces to the tonne from 575.5m down-hole with the company saying the results were reminiscent of the high-grade bonanza ore shoots at the old Bellevue mine in terms of geology, grades and width.
Mangement expects to release a resource update towards the end of the year that will include the Viago Lode that will no doubt be highly anticipated by the market.
Bellevue Executive Director Steve Parsons said: “… the results of shallow drilling recently completed at the Tribune Deposit demonstrates the high grade nature of the mineralisation from surface, which bodes well for development access to an eventual underground operation.”
“Attention of the exploration team has now shifted to defining an initial resource at the exciting Viago discovery … We intend to hit the Viago Lode hard over the next couple of months, hoping to build on the recently announced maiden resource inventory at the project in rapid time.”
Bellevue’s current mineral resource estimate extends from surface and 92% of the inventory reports no deeper than 450 metres.
All resources are located on a granted mining license and within close proximity to the historical underground mine development and infrastructure.
The Bellevue lode system is a quality Archaean high-grade quartz vein system hosted in numerous shear zones, which are strongly gold endowed and very prevalent throughout the W.A. Goldfields region.
The deposit setting compares very favourably to other large, long-life underground gold mines currently operating in the region.
Preliminary metallurgical test work for the Tribune Lode discovery resulted in 82.5% recovery of gold by gravity separation with total gold extraction approaching 99% once the remaining non-gravity recoverable gold ores were put through conventional cyanide leaching.
These results are in line with the historical performance of the ores processed at the prior operation.
The Bellevue gold mine produced 800,000 ounces at an exquisite 15g/t gold up to its closure, when low gold prices made extraction of the ore below 450m uneconomical.
By Matt Birney
