Active junior gold and copper explorer, Native Mineral Resources will move forward with diamond drilling to test for depth extensions of high-grade surface quartz vein gold at Music Well, north of Leonora, after securing a $68,000 West Australian government grant. Limited sampling has returned some bonanza grade results including one going over 100 grams per tonne gold.
WA’s Exploration Incentive Scheme supports innovative new search models and Native Minerals wants to test Music Well’s potential to host intrusion style gold mineralisation similar to that found at Saracen Minerals’ nearby 600,000-ounce Bundarra gold project and other significant deposits in the state’s world-class Yilgarn and Pilbara gold provinces.
Native Minerals has 290 square kilometres of ground in two tenements north of Leonora and a hefty 540 square kilometre of ground in WA’s Eastern Goldfields.
The company says reconnaissance work wrapped up in the March quarter returned numerous high-grade samples from an outcropping vein including 45.84 g/t gold and 15.02 g/t gold, adding to the earlier 100 g/t result. Sampling of the vein by previous explorers also returned high-grade gold including 34.8 g/t and 32.47 g/t amongst others.
Management says the March quarter work, marking Native Minerals first period on the ground since picking up the Music Well tenements last November, showed gold present in the main structure over 275 metres with the lateral extent of the mineralisation yet to be fully tested where the vein dips under shallow soil cover to the north-east and south-west.
Native Mineral Resources Managing Director, Blake Cannavo said: “This round of diamond drilling will help prove the down-dip extension of the gold-bearing vein at Music Well which has already returned exceptional gold results,”
The company says early basic gravity recovery testing on vein gold from the primary sample zone at Music Well showed positive results from 14 rock samples weighing up to 32kg.
Visible gold was recovered in all of the 14 samples.
Diamond drilling will help the company determine Music Well vein widths and structural settings at depth, with parallel veins also to be targeted.
Native Minerals has strong ground positions in prolific WA and Queensland mineral districts. Drilling in the heart of one of WA’s current hot gold belts couldn’t start at a better time given the elevated market interest in greenfield and brownfield gold exploration in the Leonora-Laverton belt.
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By Matt Birney
