Javelin Minerals has ordered more air-core drilling at its Malamute rare earths and metals project, about 10km south-east of Tottenham in central New South Wales.
The company will drill 18 new holes to follow up a 40-hole air-core program in 2019 that intersected significant lateritic material overlying ultramafic and mafic rock units within the Minemoorong Ultramafic complex. The intrusive forms a prominent egg-shaped magnetic anomaly that sits almost entirely within Javelin’s ground. At surface, it presents as a flat, featureless area.
Javelin says the drilling has been planned to provide more understanding of the underlying rock units and geological structures in underexplored areas of the Malamute project, where it believes potential untested targets exist. The new holes will test selected magnetic highs within the Minemoorong complex.
Management is still waiting on assays from 60 soil samples taken from across the Malamute tenement. The soil sampling followed a detailed historical exploration data review, which identified previously unexplored aeromagnetic features in the southern part of the tenement. Soil-sample assays are expected this quarter.
Geoscience Australia describes the stratigraphic rock unit called the Minemoorong Ultramafic, which was previously known as the Minemoorong Intrusive Complex, as a probable Alaskan-type intrusive complex partly composed of pyroxenite and defined by intense aeromagnetic anomaly. It is an Ordovician age ultramafic complex and a member of the Fifield suite of intrusive in the Lachlan Orogenic zone of eastern Australia.
The north-south trend of Alaskan-type ultramafic intrusions extends north, about 45km from Javelin’s Malamute project, to Helix Resources’ spin-out company Ionick Metals’ Homeville laterite nickel-cobalt deposit that contains 17.9 million tonnes at 0.9 per cent nickel and 0.06 per cent cobalt. Some 100km further south from Malamute, the Syerston laterite nickel-cobalt deposit contains 76.8 million tonnes at 0.73 per cent nickel and 0.13 per cent cobalt.
Both the Homeville and Syerston deposits are laterite-hosted above Alaskan-type ultramafic complexes. Laterite is the weathered profile above primary mineralisation.
Helix describes Homeville as having excellent grades of nickel and cobalt, but it needs more tonnes to be of interest. A target of 60 to 100 million tonnes is considered necessary to underpin a long-term operation.
The ultramafic belt also hosts the CZ copper deposit with 2 million tonnes at 2 per cent copper.
Also at Tottenham, Locksley Resources has volcanogenic massive sulphide copper deposits with a resource of 9.8 million tonnes at 0.7 per cent copper, 0.2 grams per tonne gold and 2g/t silver.
Javelin will be hoping to generate some additional tonnes of laterite-hosted nickel-cobalt above its Alaskan-type ultramafic rocks at Malamute and it could just prove to be a useful addition to the Homeville project development story.
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By Terry Bates
