Kula Gold’s first pass soil sampling over its wholly-owned Brunswick project in WA’s southwest has returned gold, platinum, palladium and copper anomalies over a magnetic feature it has dubbed the Hippy Lady prospect. The company believes the target is prospective for Julimar-style mineralisation and is now planning a follow up infill soils program to home in on future drilling locations.
Management argues the prospect was also prospective for Archean greenstone-hosted gold mineralisation in addition to Julimar-style ore containing gold, platinum, palladium and copper.
Chalice Mining’s world-class Gonneville platinum group elements discovery in its Julimar project in the Yilgarn craton has become a benchmark for explorers chasing similar style orebodies and has sparked flurry of activity to the east and south of Perth.
Kula’s explorationists took 81 samples over a previously identified magnetic target and results show statistically relevant gold, platinum, palladium and copper anomalism that overlap a circular magnetic feature around 400m in diameter, leading Kula to identify the potential for Julimar-style deposits.
A headline result came from the sample that returned 95 parts per million gold along with elevated copper, molybdenum, tungsten, sulphur and zinc, elements Kula said are often associated with gold mineralisation in the Yilgarn Craton greenstones.
Management believes the results from soil geochemistry indicated the high magnetic response was generated from an underlying ultramafic unit, explaining the scattered elevated nickel copper platinum group element values seen within the trend.
The presence of ultramafic rocks is further supported by a rock sample returning nickel to chromium ratios consistent with an ultramafic and is described by Kula as a coarse-grained amphibolite.
Kula Gold Chairman, Mark Stowell said: “These results are a highly encouraging start to Julimar style PGE exploration in Kula’s large tenure holding and we are looking forward to the next round of results.”
Like many others in the industry, the explorer is waiting on assay results from exploration activities carried out on other areas of the Brunswick project. The switch has also been flicked on an electromagnetic survey across a number of key targets at Brunswick last month.
The wholly-owned project lies in timber and agricultural land between Donnybrook and Brunswick Junction, around 200km south of Perth.
In addition to Brunswick, Kula is also developing the Boomerang kaolin, Marvel Loch-Airfield and Kurnalpi-Lake Rebecca gold projects in the WA Goldfields.
In late 2021 first pass auger drilling at Marvel-Loch has revealed the G-Star gold anomaly striking over 2.2km and remains open to the northwest. Buoyed by the early success, Kula collected a further 217 infill auger geochemistry samples to refine the 2.2km long gold geochemical trend.
The company discovered its Boomerang kaolin prospect last year after a trio of RC drill holes revealed thick intersections of white kaolin clays. One hole yielded a 10m hit grading a solid 7 per cent halloysite from 40m downhole within a larger 55m intercept from 5m.
Kaolin is primarily used in the paper industry as a ‘filler’ to improve gloss, smoothness and brightness. The mineral is also deployed in the production of lightweight composites for a variety of sectors, including the aerospace, automotive and marine industries.
Open file data compilation work at Kurnalpi-Lake Rebecca and detailed geophysical studies have identified two geochemical and co-incident magnetic anomalies on the tenement. Early-stage soil sampling and drilling has been completed and further development work is planned for the exploration licence.
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By Matt Birney
