Aruma Resources has snagged a high-grade gold hit amongst several other wide, shallow, lower grade gold intercepts during first pass greenfields drilling at its Salmon Gums gold project approximately 200km south of Kalgoorlie in WA. High grade hits include a 1 metre intersection grading 13.35 grams per tonne gold from 108m within a broader 4m interval going 4.26g/t gold from 105m downhole.
Extensive broad zones of mineralisation were also encountered during the maiden drill program at Salmon Gums that the company says may be just skimming the edge of a potential higher-grade gold system nearby. Broad gold hits included a massive 94m mineralised envelope that gave up 0.11g/t gold from 6m downhole with the drillhole ending in mineralisation.
The recent results round out the pending assays from the initial 33-hole drill program for a total of 2,298m. Due to industry wide prolonged assay times, the company has completed an entire second-phase drill program at Salmon Gums comprising 39 holes for 3,943m with assay results pending.
Interestingly, the 13.35g/t gold intercept from the first phase of drilling occurred at the end of the hole. The company says the unexplored area below that drillhole presents an exciting, high-priority target that has now been drilled in the recently completed second-phase, follow-up program.
Phase one drilling primarily targeted wide-spaced magnetic anomalies in the south of the project area with 15 of the holes set on a narrower spacing designed to zero in on historic anomalous intersections including a 7m section at 2.71 g/t gold.
Although the majority of the gold grades returned displayed a relatively low tenor, the wide intercepts are encouraging as they may potentially point to a much larger system at play according to the company. Aruma says the talc-chlorite shears and quartz veining intersected in recent drilling may just be the outer alteration halo around a primary higher-grade ore source nearby.
Anomalous results within the Salmon Gums project showing greater than 1 gram-metre intersections have defined a broad anomalous zone that strikes 2.3 kilometres in a south-southwest direction from its Thistle prospect. Importantly the gold results display a mineralised parcel ranging in thickness from 100 to 200m, highlighting the potential scale of the gold system across the Salmon Gums project area.
The Salmon Gums gold project is located in a sparsely explored area just 30 kilometres along strike and in the same stratigraphy as Pantoro Limited’s rapidly expanding, high-grade Scotia gold project.
Aruma also recently received assay results from a phase two drill campaign at the company’s Saltwater Gold project in the Pilbara region of WA. The program consisted of 1,872m of RC drilling for a total of 20 holes.
Management says the drilling at Saltwater was designed to follow up on some positive phase one drill results that show a potential new gold camp. Despite the grades received being relatively low, Aruma says the area has now vindicated the targeting of the ‘ring structures’ and it will follow up with detailed geophysical modelling, mapping and a sampling campaign.
Due to the nature of greenfields exploration, hitting a wide, low grade alteration halo, although not eye-grabbing in nature from a grade perspective, is nonetheless positive news for a junior explorer.
With another batch of drill samples on the way to the lab, including holes that targeted the high-grade hit in phase 1 drilling at Salmon Gums– things could get interesting for Aruma if it manages to find the potential source of the mineralisation.
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By Matt Birney
