With its Goongarrie tenements renewed for a further five years, junior explorer Zuleika Gold has assembled boots on ground in its hunt for gold and nickel within the company’s under-explored tenure in WA’s goldfields. The company has commenced a 740-sample soil geochemistry program designed to infill previous geochemical sampling and extend the coverage over the 20km-long prospective greenstone belt.
Zuleika’s Goongarrie project is located in the northern regions of the Wongi Hills Greenstone Belt, which extends 50km north from Ora Banda Mining’s 592,000-ounce Siberia gold project.
Despite the project’s proximity to the gold mining centre, little historical exploration has been conducted on the far northern reaches of the prospective greenstone belt.
The company says structural interpretations have identified a series of faults coincident with large-scale folding that could act as pathways for gold-bearing fluids.
Historical soil sampling by previous operator Rumble Resources identified two significant nickel-in-soil anomalies grading higher than 250 parts per million. The first anomaly, located on the western edge of the tenure, strikes northwest over 12km with peak grades of 1,060ppm nickel. The second extends for nearly 2km at the southeast corner of the tenement and coincides with fertile ultramafic rocks of the Walter Williams formation that hosts the nearby Cawse nickel-laterite deposit.
Several strong gold-in-soil anomalies have also been etched out from Rumble’s soil program. Interestingly, these anomalies correlate with interpreted structures considered prospective as conduits for mineralising fluids.
Auger sampling completed by Zuleika in 2020 and 2021 extended the strike of gold-in-soil anomalies to roughly 10km, running parallel with the western nickel-in-soil anomaly.
Previous sampling conducted by Rumble and Zuleika is widely spaced at 400m to 800m intervals with samples typically 100m apart. Sections of the greenstone belt also remain surprisingly untested.
Zuleika Gold Managing Director, Jonathan Lea said: “With potential for both gold and nickel mineralisation, the work will better define the extensive existing anomalies and define new ones over the 20km long greenstone package. Assuming positive results, we expect to have approval in place by mid-2023 to commence drill testing the priority anomalies.”
Zuleika has interests in four major gold projects in the Kalgoorlie region. It is earning a 75 per cent share of its namesake project, 50 per cent of its Credo project and 80 per cent of its Goongarrie and Menzies gold projects.
The company’s tenement package is the third largest holding within the world-class Zuleika Shear Zone behind ASX-listed Evolution Mining and domestic gold producer Norton Goldfields. To give an idea of its ‘world-class nature’, the prolific shear zone has reportedly produced about 20 million ounces of gold to date.
Zuleika has also secured a 4.1 per cent interest in the K2 project after the WA Supreme Court found in the company’s favour in litigation taken against fellow explorer Vango Mining and a subsidiary.
K2 is part of the Plutonic Well greenstone belt which hosts a large number of gold deposits that have produced more than 5 million ounces of gold since 1990 – mostly from the Plutonic mine’s five open pits and two underground operations.
The partially developed K2 gold mine has a measured, indicated and inferred underground resource of 374,000 tonnes at 8.9 grams per tonne for 107,000 ounces gold.
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