Aurumin has launched a 1250-metre reverse circulation drilling program at the company’s 64,700-ounce Gwendolyn gold deposit at its Johnson Range project, between Southern Cross and Sandstone in the Western Australian Goldfields.
The validation and infill campaign is the first drilling undertaken since 2013 at the 803,000-tonne, 2.51 grams per tonne (g/t) Gwendolyn resource and, in the current heady gold market, it has the potential to prove up an impeccably timed resource development opportunity.
The five-day, 17-hole campaign aims to quickly lift geological confidence in the current inferred resource to enable a reclassification to indicated status, which could lead to economic and mining studies.
It will focus on three key higher-grade zones within the uppermost 80m of the existing resource model. Aurumin expects to receive assays from the program by mid-May.
Aurumin's managing director Daniel Raihani said: “This is the first drilling at Johnson Range in over a decade and we’re pleased to be hitting the ground running during this historic gold price environment. Our focus is on validating and upgrading the Gwendolyn resource, which we believe could become a key near-term development opportunity within our broader Sandstone strategy.”
Raihini said given the deposit’s location on a granted mining lease and gold trading above $5000 per ounce, the timing couldn’t be better to advance the asset toward development, setting a strong foundation for potential production scenarios and supporting the company’s goal of re-establishing operations in the broader Goldfields region.
The Gwendolyn deposit is on an existing mining lease, which has a history of mining dating back to the late 1980s. It is within haulage distance of multiple processing centres in the region,
The deposit appears to have considerable potential, as indicated by the results of a 2014 bulk sampling program undertaken by then owner ASX-listed Vector Resources, which delivered 3150 ounces of gold from 29,219 dry tonnes of ore with a 3.35g/t gold recovered grade and a 94.08 per cent gold recovery.
Aurumin appears to also believe in that potential, given the company has already kicked off baseline environmental and water studies in anticipation of progressing to mine permitting.
The current resource estimate is constrained between the surface and 100m vertical depth. The three targets for this phase of drilling comprise higher grade zones within that depth range, two of which contain block model indicated grades of 8g/t and 16g/t gold.
Any mineralisation identified below the 100m depth is unclassified and has not been reported.
The Gwendolyn deposit lies within Aurumin’s Johnson Range project, which is part of the company’s Sandstone Operations, where its key focus is the Central Sandstone project it acquired three years ago.
Below 100m depth at Gwendolyn, initial geological modelling points to scattered gold mineralisation, particularly along the southern half of the current block model, with better results in a more robust zone at the model’s southern end.
Future deeper and more closely spaced drilling may be able to develop the operation below 100m, however, in the meantime Aurumin has its mind set on bringing the near-surface gold to a mill as soon as possible.
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By Doug Bright
