Si6 Metals looks set to stock up Santa’s sack with a mass of gold-rich results following first-pass exploration across the company’s Monument project in WA.
A reconnaissance program over the recently acquired project has returned a feast of high-grade grab samples, some of which have assayed at over an ounce per tonne gold. The Monument gold mineralisation can be traced over a massive 9 kilometres of strike, highlighting it as a priority target for future exploration.
Recent sampling along the A1-Perseverance Gold Trend at Monument extended from Fred’s Well in the south through the Waihi and Perseverance prospects in the north. The star of the show was the Fred’s Well prospect which returning a wealth of high-grade rock chips along more than 650m of strike, including samples grading an impressive 39.3 g/t gold, 21.3 g/t gold and 13.15 g/t gold.
The Perseverance discovery ran a close second, with rock chipping of artisanal mine spoil and ferruginous cherts kicking up results of up to 21.5 g/t gold. Additional samples from the Perseverance prospect include grades of 15.15 g/t gold, 10 g/t gold and 8.29 g/t gold, defining a gold envelope that stretches over more than 1,000m of strike at that particular prospect.
Si6 Metals Executive Chairman, Patrick Holywell said: “We are firmly focussed on a gold project in Western Australia and our base metals project in Botswana, with the latter currently being drilled and about 50% from expected depth on the current hole.”
The Monument gold project is located 44km west of Laverton in the fertile North-Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. The project’s 300 square kilometres of tenure overlies the northern extensions of the revered Laverton Tectonic Zone, which hosts a wealth of gold mining operations and boasts an endowment of more than 30 million ounces of gold.
Curiously, the Monument project is located along the same structure which hosts the nearby 2.1-million-ounce Mt Morgans operation, just 20km to the south. Early exploration across the company’s tenure has identified a quiver of discoveries along the A1-Perseverance structure including the Korong deposit and the Waihi, Perseverance and Fred’s Well prospects.
Si6’s work program at Monument is pursuing a two-pronged approach with a regional evaluation seeking to model and define the gold-bearing structures throughout the company’s project area, whilst three-dimensional modelling of the existing resources begins to unlock the potential of the ore systems. The exploration program is already taking shape with the company building a pipeline of targets across the terrane.
Recent sampling at Monument targeted the 9km of strike between the A1 and Perseverance discoveries, with 138 rock chip and grab samples being bagged up from a variety of historical mines and outcropping stratigraphy.
The sampling program has successfully outlined a broad envelope of gold mineralisation along the entire strike length of the targeted structure, with the majority of samples returning anomalous levels of gold mineralisation and more than 20 per cent of the samples weighing in at over 1 g/t gold.
Interestingly, there are no historical records of sampling at the high-grade Perseverance and Fred’s Well discoveries, with the company defining targets along significant strike lengths at both prospects. Other prospects highlighted by the program include the A1 target, with rock chips grading up to 7.62 g/t gold and the A4 discovery that boasts samples going over 4.40 g/t gold.
Si6 has also been undertaking a detailed review of the resource at Korong and mineralisation at Waihi. Three-dimensional modelling of the Korong ore system indicates that the near surface deposit extends along more than 600m of strike and is hosted by a magnetite-rich banded iron with associated iron-rich chert units. The host units have been folded and cross-cut by various faults, which further complicates the geology of the deposit.
Korong already hosts a potentially open pitable resource of 860,000 tonnes at 1.8 g/t gold with modelling now indicating that a number of south-east plunging shoots remain untested by drilling.
The Waihi discovery is located 6.5km to the north-west of Korong and represents a similar geological target, although it is yet to be systematically drill tested. The company is currently designing a 34 hole, 4,375m reverse circulation drilling program to test the deeper extensions to both the Waihi and Korong discoveries.
With Si6 now poised to jump into drilling at Monument and already burrowing deep into the Limpopo Nickel Belt in Botswana, the company, that seemingly came from no-where this year, looks set for an exciting start to 2021.
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