Aruma Resources has kicked off its gold hunt in WA, with drilling commencing at its Saltwater project in the Ashburton Basin, south-west of Newman. The company has locked in 5,000m of reverse circulation drilling to test key mineralised geological features on the western extremities of its gold-bearing “Saltwater Ring” target.
Aruma’s Saltwater gold project is located on the southern margin of the Pilbara region in Western Australia, within the mineral-rich rocks of the Ashburton Basin. The company’s tenure lies around 100km to the south-west of the Pilbara mining centre at Newman and covers more than 700 square kilometres of the unexplored terrane. The Ashburton Basin boasts a number of gold and base metal projects including the Mt Olympus gold deposits, the Ilgarari copper deposit and the developing Abra lead mine.
Saltwater was pegged by the company following an exhaustive project generation exercise by Aruma’s technical team, who quickly recognised the potential of the under explored region which hosts prospective geology, mineral-bearing structures and a history of gold mining which dates back more than a century.
The company’s first-pass exploration over the Saltwater project has recognised a number of priority targets for exploration, with large alteration zones and gold-bearing quartz veining having been identified by initial field work at the Monster, Saltwater and Black Hill prospects.
Aruma’s maiden exploration program will utilise eight lines of reverse circulation drilling to the western end of the Saltwater Ring Structure, where outcropping auriferous quartz veining has previously been exploited by artisanal miners.
Drilling will target the rocks of the Mt McGrath Formation, which also hosts the Mt Olympus gold deposits, with five short drill sections set to test the known mineralisation in the west of the prospect area. Three longer drill sections will test the underlying stratigraphy to the east of the main prospect area, chasing the high-grade quartz vein mineralisation under a shallow cover sequence of soils, sands and gravel.
The company has put in place a Program of Works with the WA Department of Mines for 20,000m of drilling over the Saltwater targets giving Aruma ample scope to follow up this maiden program as results are received in early 2021.
Aruma looks to have made the most of its first-mover advantage in the Ashburton region and has pegged eight exploration licenses. The company’s leases cover the more than 65km strike of the interpreted of the gold-bearing Nanjilgardy Fault, delivering it a strategic holding in the region and giving the budding explorer plenty of room to make a significant discovery.
The Nanjilgardy Fault is an east-west trending, crustal scale structure which hosts Kalamazoo’s resurgent Mt Olympus gold deposits which are around 90km to the north-west of the Saltwater project, and currently boasts a resource of close to 1.65 million ounces of gold. Mining between 1998 and 2004 extracted around 350,000 ounces from the open pit deposits, bringing the total endowment of the Mt Olympus field to over 2 million ounces – a significant discovery which Aruma would no doubt like to replicate at Saltwater.
Drilling is now underway at Saltwater and is due to be completed prior to Christmas, with first results expected in late January 2021. The program puts Aruma on the path to unlocking a potential discovery in the region and marks the first steps of this pioneering explorer in the metal-rich Ashburton Basin.
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