Javelin Minerals has kicked off its maiden drill program at the company’s recently acquired Eureka gold project, 50 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie in WA’s Eastern Goldfields, targeting extensions to known mineralisation along strike and at depth. The targets sit outside the project’s existing 112,000 gold-ounce resource.
The company has hit the ground running at speed and has already completed four holes at the southern end of the Eureka pit. It also plans to test several high-grade targets to the pit’s north and several high-grade lodes that extend beneath the open pit.
A 3000-metre reverse circulation drill program will hammer into a minimum of 12 prospective structural and geochemical targets, including some that sit immediately along strike from the existing deposit.
The program is the first in four years at the project and is expected to take two weeks. Javelin has reached a canny deal with leading drilling contractor TopDrill to complete the program under a drill-for-equity arrangement.
Several stunning historical gold drill hits have been intersected outside the resource, including 4m grading 135 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 3m running at 48.75g/t and a solid 4m hit at 32.6g/t gold.
The project sits across four granted mining leases and contains a resource of 2.45 million tonnes at 1.42g/t for 112,000 ounces of gold.
Notably, 62,000 ounces sit in the indicated category after drilling of tighter-spaced holes and the mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth.
Javelin is working on mining and economic studies for the near-term mining of 34,000 ounces from the resource’s indicated portion at the southern end of the pit.
Management believes it could begin mining the ounces within 12 months. The ore is in an optimised pit shell design based on a $4000 to $4200 per ounce gold price.
Javelin Minerals executive chairman Brett Mitchell said: “The start of drilling at Eureka is a pivotal point for Javelin. We know Eureka hosts a significant mineralised system with huge growth potential. It has had little to no modern exploration despite the mineralisation being open and numerous targets being identified which are now high priority exploration targets in the current record gold price environment.”
The company has begun discussions with nearby operators with gold processing plants to treat the ore from Eureka. It is hoping to cash in on the record gangbuster gold price, which has risen 23 per cent so far this year.
There is potential for lucrative cash flow if the company can negotiate a processing and mining deal while the price hovers near its all-time high.
Javelin engaged leading firm Core Geophysics to evaluate all historical open file data, including magnetic surveys, auger and reverse circulation drilling results from the prospect. The review identified a series of targets with robust magnetics coinciding with soil geochemical anomalies in under-explored areas within the site.
The Eureka mineralisation occurs as a series of lens-shaped ore shoots up to 10m wide within a shear zone. Gold is hosted in quartz veins and stringers within altered mafic host rocks. The quartz veining contains quartz, carbonate and low amounts of sulphides with visible gold in parts.
Previous mining at the site worked a 120m deep, 300m long open pit developed by working some lens-shaped shoots extending up to 10m in width within a 30m wide shear zone.
The Eureka deposit is within the Bardoc Tectonic Zone that is known for hosting Norton Gold Fields’ Paddington gold mine, which opened in 1985 and produced more than 211,000 ounces of gold last year.
Eureka has a production history and has been previously mined by two firms. West Coast Holdings pumped out 32,000 gold-ounces from 220,000t at 4.5g/t and Tyranna Resources produced more than 5000 ounces from 50,600t grading 3.16g/t gold.
Javelin will be looking to define further gold outside its existing resources from this drilling program, which may open the door to another meaningful and valuable WA gold project amid these heady gold prices.
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By Craig Nolan
