The proposed multibillion-dollar merger between Kalgoorlie Super Pit owners Northern Star Resources and Saracen Mineral Holdings might be the talk of the town at next week’s Diggers & Dealers conference but gold junior and budding developer, Middle Island Resources, has been consistently kicking goals at its historic Sandstone gold project in WA during a massive two-phase, 50,000m-plus drilling campaign this year.
Perth-based Middle Island has again pumped out an enviable array of high-grade drill hits, this time from the key Shillington deposit and the Twin Shafts deposit, the latter which has yet to be included in any resource estimation.
The company’s “phase two” drilling program was predominantly focused on upgrading existing deposits as well as infilling and extending the five new satellite open-pit deposits at Sandstone to an indicated mineral resource classification. The five new satellites are McClaren, McIntyre, Ridge, Old Town Well and Plum Pudding.
Shillington represents one of the larger oxide open-pit gold deposits in the project’s suite of deposits and, according to Middle Island, is likely to underpin the planned feasibility study on rejuvenating the former Sandstone gold operation.
Notable RC intercepts from recent drilling – comprising 20 infill and extension holes totalling 1,218m – at Shillington, located 2.5km north of the company’s existing 600,000 tonnes-per-annum gold processing plant, included 6m going 10.5 grams per tonne gold from 14m, 8m at 9.12 g/t from 26m and 4m at 4.08 g/t from 32m.
According to the company, the final phase-two RC drilling at Shillington has validated its existing resource model. It is expected that a portion of the inferred mineral resources lying within the optimum pit shell design will be upgraded to the indicated category. In addition, drilling results have also extended shallow mineralisation to the north of the existing deposit limits.
Middle Island says that consistent with previous work, mineralisation is associated with auriferous zones of brecciation and quartz veining within a series of stacked, north-west trending and shallow north-east dipping banded iron formation units. It takes in the Shillington Banded Iron Formation package, which also hosts its Ridge, McClaren and McIntyre deposits along strike to the south-east.
At Twin Shafts, a further 24 infill RC holes totalling 1,524m, at what is potentially the economic southern extension of the old open pit, returned notable intersections of 4m at 8.12 g/t gold from 31m, 4m at 3.12 g/t from 33m and 10m at 2.27 g/t from 41m.
Importantly, the company says the Twin Shafts southern extension assay results will now be applied in an updated resource estimate and will also be used in pit optimisation studies on mining of the southern extension, which lies only 500m south-west of the Sandstone mill.
Middle Island this month increased the overall Sandstone inferred and indicated resource to 18.74 million tonnes grading 1.15 g/t for 692,000 ounces of contained gold.
By virtue of travel restrictions, a sky-high gold price and in the wake of the big Northern Star-Saracen tie-up, Diggers & Dealers is sure to have a big WA gold flavour, with Middle Island, Calidus Resources, Horizon Minerals, Capricorn Metals, Novo Resources, Wiluna Mining Corp, Venus Metals, Ora Banda Mining, Anglo Australian Resources, and a veritable conga line of other gold explorers, developers and producers to set the forum alight this year.
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