Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has completed follow-up air-core (AC) drilling on thick gold intercepts from its Pinjin project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region as part of a mission to expand its promising Wessex target, just 650m south-west of Hawthorn Resources’ Anglo-Saxon pit.
In a further extension to its latest campaign, the company also put 25 holes into its Kirgella Gift North and Providence West zones. The entire program comprised 67 AC drillholes for 3726m of drilling at the three sites to also chase possible resource extensions at Kirgella North and Providence West.
KalGold’s Pinjin project lies 140km north-east of the WA town of Kalgoorlie on the highly-prospective Laverton Tectonic Zone – a major crustal suture that hosts several of the State’s most significant resources for gold and base metals. The company’s latest round of drilling sought, in part, to resolve the existence and nature of any relationship between the Wessex and Anglo-Saxon mineralised zones.
The first phase of AC drilling threw up attention-grabbing intercepts, including one hole that revealed 28m at 1.27 grams per tonne gold from 36m with 8m at 1.9g/t from 44m and another 8m at 2.15g/t gold from 56m. A second hole gave up another significant intercept of 12m going 1.17g/t gold from 52m including 4m at 3.07g/t gold from 56m.
KalGold sees the intercepts as meaningful, especially for a first phase of AC scout drilling, and they also demonstrate the potential of the Wessex zone in the southern end of the Pinjin goldfield and the company’s project area generally. The phase-one AC drill results hint at the possibility of Wessex being part of a broader gold system related to the nearby Anglo-Saxon open-pit mine and also point to untested target potential north and south of the present drilling and down-dip to the east from Wessex towards Anglo-Saxon.
On receiving the phase-one results, Kalgold said if further AC drilling picked up any scent of gold that could point to potentially deeper targets, especially in the expected down-dip extensions towards Anglo-Saxon, it could justify deploying a reverse-circulation (RC) rig for its greater reach and likely need to penetrate fresh rock targets. And that turned out to be the case as the AC rig pushed all of the holes to drill-bit refusal in the second phase.
Further south at Kirgella Gift and Providence, management revealed a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate just over a month ago for both deposits of 2.34 million tonnes at an average gold grade of 1g/t for 76,400 ounces from just 3m depth. It said mineralisation remained open at depth and along strike between the two sets of historic workings and had strong potential for resource growth and upgrade if untested and unclassified blocks outside the limits of the resource model were drilled.
It led to five holes being assigned to the Kirgella Gift North extensional program for 204m and 20 holes to Providence West for 648m in the latest AC program to chase up the possibility of repeating mineralisation found at its Providence deposit.
KalGold is now planning to launch into more AC drilling next month to test other targets in its Pinjin project area, with results expected in November. It is also putting together programs for November and December to build on past results and anticipates that will include deeper RC drilling at Wessex to define gold mineralisation in fresh rock and additional RC drilling to upgrade and/or extend the combined mineral resource at Kirgella Gift and Providence.
Management also expects to undertake scout extension and other AC drilling throughout the project area and that results from the wide-ranging November/December programs will be available in January next year.
With the promise of proving a connection between the Wessex and Anglo-Saxon zones and further anticipation of identifying extensions at Kirgella North and Providence West, KalGold will be on tenterhooks waiting on results from its phase-two AC program, which will inform and help finalise its future drilling plans and designs.
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By Doug Bright
