Aruma Resources’ maiden RC drilling campaign at its Saltwater gold project about 100 kilometres south-west of Newman in WA’s Pilbara region has returned a cluster of encouraging gold sniffs that the company says may be the makings of what it calls a “new gold camp”.
According to Perth-based Aruma, assay results received for 37 holes of the 40-hole maiden program totalling 4,518 metres point to a strike length of four kilometres and the discovery of a possible gold camp on an interesting-looking “ring structure” at the project.
The company’s initial drilling focus was on outcropping areas amongst old gold workings at the western end of the Saltwater ring structure, a 60-square-kilometre magnetic-conductivity anomaly that sits within its exploration licences.
Aruma reported one-metre intersections grading up to 1.26 grams per tonne gold from the closer-spaced drilling of the historical workings area to the west, whilst the wider-spaced extension holes probing under cover to the east detected a significant supergene blanket in excess of 200m wide.
The company says the supergene blanket is located almost 4km from the Saltwater cluster of gold intercepts to the west and suggests the potential for a significant gold-bearing system.
Aruma Resources Managing Director, Peter Schwann said: "The intersections from our maiden drilling program at the Saltwater project are highly encouraging, and are the highest to date in the area, and deliver confirmation of our exploration model, and the potential size of the system. The large, 60-square-kilometre, Saltwater magnetic ring structure will be further tested to define possible resources in the next phase of drilling."
Aruma’s close-spaced drilling vectored in on old workings at the historic Saltwater mining area within the recently identified Mt McGrath Formation stratigraphy, which takes in Kalamazoo Resources’ Mt Olympus gold mine at its Ashburton project.
Ashburton, which takes in Mt Olympus and four nearby satellite deposits, currently hosts an inferred and indicated global resource of in excess of 20.78 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 2.5 g/t for 1.6 million ounces of gold.
Aruma plans to carry out a round of follow-up drilling to further tease out the potential of the ring structure at Saltwater.
The ASX-listed gold explorer says its project tenure covers a strike extent of more than 65km of the Nanjilgardy fault, the same regional structure reported as the primary source of gold mineralisation at Northern Star Resources’ Paulsens gold mine and the Mt Olympus mine in the region.
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By Matt Birney
