Horizon Minerals’ joint venture (JV) partner Dundas Minerals has hit high-grade gold from an initial drilling program at their Windanya gold project after the two companies recently completed an option agreement.
Solid gold hits going as high as 3m at 10.2 grams per tonne gold from 109m were recorded at three highly-prospective areas – the Aquarius and Scorpio prospects and at the historic Capricorn gold deposit, which Dundas was testing for a southern extension.
The reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program was designed as an initial test of significant gold in soil sample anomalies at the Aquarius and Scorpio prospects and to potentially stretch the Capricorn resource that sits at 700,000 tonnes at 1.2g/t for 25,500 gold ounces.
The drilling program comprised 37 holes for 4119m, with a maximum hole depth of 140m. A total of 18 holes were drilled at the Aquarius prospect, 14 holes at Scorpio and five holes were drilled at Capricorn.
At Capricorn, four fence holes were drilled 40m to the south of the 2021 inferred resource model shell. One deeper hole was drilled from the north-west to the south-east to test for additional mineralisation at depth.
Each of the four holes drilled south of the existing deposit intersected anomalous gold values, including high-grade intercepts in two of the holes. Dundas says new drilling confirms and extends the high-grade nature of gold mineralisation at Capricorn and demonstrates the potential to expand the existing resource to the south, north and west with additional drilling.
The best gold results at Capricorn were 3m at 9.14g/t from 114m, 3m at 5.3g/t from 28m and 1m at 6.6g/t from 25m.
The Aquarius prospect produced encouraging results, with the highest-grade intercepts situated on the western and eastern ends of the soil anomaly. Results included the highlight 3m going 10.2g/t gold from 109m, 2m at 6.5g/t gold from 70m and a 1m slice at 5.04g/t gold from 49m.
The JV says Scorpio mineralisation appears to be controlled by shallow, east-dipping structures, with similarities between it and the Capricorn deposit. The deposits are separated by about 2km, with a likely single corridor of potential mineralisation that is largely untested by soil sampling or drilling.
Scorpio drilling produced 2m at 3.2g/t gold from 9m and 1m at 6.5g/t gold from 49m.
Horizon has an option agreement with ASX-listed Dundas that enables the latter to acquire an 85 per cent interest in 19 tenements across two gold projects – Windanya containing 25,000 ounces from an inferred gold resource and Baden-Powell with 23,000 inferred ounces. Horizon received about $500,000 in a mix of cash and Dundas shares for the option agreement, allowing it to retain upside from any exploration success.
Horizon says it recently divested many of its non-core projects to build shareholder value, reduce investment expenditure and administrative costs and generate sale proceeds that it could direct to exploration spend and development of the core projects in its portfolio.
This strategy already appears to be paying dividends for the company, with potential for plenty more on the horizon.
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By Craig Nolan
