Australian Potash has identified a large number of gold anomalies from a regional air core drilling program at its Lake Wells joint venture gold project located approximately 130km north-east of Laverton in WA. Drill intercepts of up to 6m at 0.327 grams per tonne gold have included anomalous levels of pathfinder elements often associated with gold mineralisation.
Australian Potash operates its 70 percent owned Lake Wells gold project in the Yamarna Region’s Shear Zone belt with joint venture partner, St Barbara Ltd. The company has drilled up a storm at the project in the last year with 781 air core holes drilled to date for a total of 38,773 metres. Whilst field operations have been temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, management said that assay results have been very encouraging.
Air core drill holes are essentially just a large soil sample below any cover that may exist and gold numbers of any grade are a good indicator that an ore body may be lurking close by.
A number of gold anomalies have been identified with associated pathfinder geochemistry showing up anomalous levels of arsenic, bismuth and antimony. Australian Potash’s technical team believes the gold is associated with narrow, laminated quartz veins in shear zones that have similarities to Kundana-style deposits that the company said had yielded recovered gold and remaining resources of over eight million ounces.
Australian Potash said that whilst grades have been modest to date, the broadly spaced results have been reported from multiple drill holes covering more than nine kilometres of strike distance which begs the question, where is the source. The best intercept of 6m at 0.327g/t gold from 67m included 1m at 0.727g/t gold. Other drill intercepts included 1m at 0.523g/t from 34m, 1m at 0.443g/t gold from 51m and 1m going 0.365g/t from 55m.
The company said the Yamarna region has been enjoying ongoing exploration success since the discovery of Gruyere in 2013. Adjacent tenement holder, Gold Road Resources, continues to demonstrate the underexplored nature of the Yamarna Belt and the potential to delineate deposits of commercial scale.
With almost 6Moz of gold currently delineated at the Gruyere project along the Yamarna Shear Zone, Gold Road and its operating partner, Gold Fields, are now looking to produce around 300,000 ounces per year from the Gruyere mine that commenced gold production in 2019.
Australian Potash will be looking at its latest positive results as encouragement to fine tune its program so it can get back into the field as soon as possible. It will no doubt zero in on its south-eastern tenements known as the South Yamarna area as it looks to duplicate the Gruyere gold mine along trend some 50 kilometres to the southeast.
Australian Potash Managing Director and CEO, Matthew Shackleton said: “The identification of multiple large gold anomalies and corresponding alteration systems is a fantastic outcome from the aircore program.”
“The strong indicators identified are driving planning for infill AC drilling and deeper reverse circulation (RC) drilling to penetrate the fresh rock. Other Yamarna Shear Zone examples demonstrate that it is in the fresh rock that the true gold grades these anomalies point to may be seen."
“Comparing the stage of our South Yamarna anomaly camp in relation to the early work reported at Gruyere is extremely encouraging. On returning to the field, the exploration teams will look to test the identified anomalies at depth, which is where the grades proved to be a game changer for the Gruyere deposit. Deeper drilling is necessary to uncover the true potential of the anomalies that the team have uncovered to date.”
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By Matt Birney
