Strickland Metals is galloping along at its 100 per cent-owned Horse Well prospect in the Warburton mineral field, about 85km north-east of Wiluna in Western Australia, with more solid gold hits from drilling.
Management has today revealed new intercepts of 4m at 1.7 grams per tonne gold from 2m in near-surface laterite and an impressive 58m at 1.7g/t gold from 17m, including 10m at 4.2g/t gold, largely in the weathered oxide zone. The results came from a recent air-core (AC) drilling campaign where one of multiple north-west-trending shear zones intersected significant shearing, veining and silica-potassic alteration.
The company has named the new zone at its Yandal gold project in the Yandal-Millrose greenstone belt, “Konik”. It follows a familiar equine theme as the moniker is a diminutive of the Polish word “kon”, which means “horse”.
Historically, a kon was a small, semi-feral and unusual breed of horse that descended from the Tarpan – a wild European forest horse that was hunted to extinction in Britain in Neolithic times.
Strickland Metals chief executive officer Andrew Bray said: “Our ongoing air-core program has delivered another fantastic discovery at the newly identified Konik trend. The discovery highlights how fertile the Horse Well prospect area is, and the area’s potential to deliver additional gold mineralisation with strong grades and over large widths. Given we’re a little over halfway through the air-core program, it is an incredible result to have thus far delivered two new discoveries at Konik and Marwari ... as well as identifying a large, undrilled prospective corridor to the north-west at Pegasus, which appears to be the extension of Marwari.”
Mr Bray said the AC rig was now at the company’s Pegasus target, with drilling set to begin imminently through several fence lines in a bid to map the geology and test for extensions to Marwari. The rig is then planned to move to Konik for four short fence lines before moving back to continue the southern extensional drilling of the Marwari structure.
Management also plans to systematically test large parts of the Horse Well prospect area, away from its other discoveries and a reverse-circulation (RC) rig is expected to arrive towards the end of this month to assist with an expanded drill program.
Strickland’s Konik discovery is about 900m west of its Marwari find, which it revealed a fortnight ago. It thundered down the home straight to uncover a previously unexplored high-grade gold trend with one AC hole intersecting 31m at 5.6g/t gold from 72m to bottom-of-hole, including 8m at 17.7g/t gold.
Marwari also takes its name from a rare breed of horse from the Marwar (or Jodhpur) region of Rajasthan, in north-west India.
The latest result at Konik represents another exciting new discovery for Strickland, with its mineralisation hosted in a shear zone on a contact between intermediate volcanoclastics and basalt. The new trend is traceable in geophysical datasets for a further 600m south of its discovery hole.
The Konik shear zone is characterised by silica-potassic alteration associated with massive quartz veining and has not been previously tested. It appears to be terminated at its southern end by a project-scale north-east-trending fault and is likely terminated similarly at its northern end, but that is yet to be precisely defined.
The Marwari shear zone seems to be structurally similar to Konik, with one of the bigger north-east-trending faults common to both targets.
Strickland’s ongoing AC drilling has tested the Konik trend 200m south from its discovery hole and it says it has managed to identify the shear zone from its characteristic veining and alteration along strike, although assays are still pending.
The Konik discovery is only about 250m north-east of the company’s previously-defined advanced target at Bronco and appears to be on the same arcuate strike as the Filly and Warmblood resource zones, about 1.5km and 2km to the south/south-west, respectively. The structural connections between them are still being refined.
The company says it will expand its originally planned 40,000m AC drill program to 50,000m to accommodate additional close-spaced drilling along the prospective Konik trend once testing of the Pegasus prospect is complete. It is awaiting analytical results from Marwari and Pegasus and new information should soon also be forthcoming from further drilling at Konik.
The company remains well-funded after selling its Millrose gold deposit to Northern Star Resources for about $61 million in July. Time will now tell if the company can breathe new life into the names of long extinct or rare breeds of horses at Konik and Marwari.
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