ASX-listed explorer, Kingwest Resources, is about to embark on a maiden, first-pass RAB and aircore drilling program at its Goongarrie gold project 40km south of its flagship Menzies project and 90km north of Kalgoorlie.
The Perth-based company, who recently completed an encouraging scoping study on the Goongarrie Lady deposit, has decided to sink the drill bit into what it describes as “an overlooked gold exploration opportunity”, most of which lies beneath thin salt lake cover.
About 29,000 tonnes of ore grading 4.5 grams per tonne was mined at Goongarrie Lady in the 1990s by Julia Mines. After a review of the geological setting and historic exploration data that identified numerous high priority targets, Kingwest will kickstart the 5,000m drill campaign next month.
Three regionally significant gold-mineralised structures that run into the Goongarrie project area, mainly under cover, are being targeted, including an 18km section of the alluvium-covered and virtually unexplored, gold- mineralised Victorious Basalt/Black Flag beds contact, which hosts Bardoc Gold’s 1.7-million-ounce Aphrodite gold deposit just 7km south of Kingwest’s leases.
Kingwest Chief Executive, Ed Turner said: “Despite its obvious gold endowment, the Goongarrie gold project is remarkably underexplored compared to most of the Eastern Goldfields because most of the area lies under shallow lake sediments which has inhibited previous exploration.”
“Modern, cost-effective lake drilling rigs are now readily available to perform this work. Kingwest has tens of kilometres of gold mineralised structures to test along strike from major gold deposits.”
The Goongarrie scoping study led to an open-pit mining target of 50,000t of ore grading 3.12 g/t gold and an estimated before-tax cash flow from the project of about $6-$12 million based on the trucking of ore to and processing through a toll treatment mill.
Several plants are located within the region that are accessible by road and Kingwest says it is in discussions with third parties about the potential commercialisation of the Goongarrie Lady deposit.
Last week the company increased the total mineral resource at its more advanced historic Menzies gold project just up the road to 4.78 million tonnes going a solid 2.08 g/t for 319,900 ounces of contained gold, with much of it relatively shallow.
It has now lifted the inferred and indicated resource there by 37 per cent since March 2020 and 87 per cent since September 2019 and will no doubt be hoping the inaugural drilling at Goongarrie will be able to tease out additional near-surface resources that can be economically exploited via low-cost conventional methods.
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By Matt Birney
