Legend Mining’s ascension from ‘explorer’ to the ranks of ‘discoverer’ has been an admirably fought geological crusade in Western Australia’s Fraser Range, with its Mawson prospect returning another cracking suite of nickel-copper-cobalt assays. Spectacular visible massive sulphide intersections previously pointed to the potential for some exciting grades, however, the latest numbers went beyond expectations with nearly 36 metres of combined high-grade mineralisation.
Hole 17 surpassed the prospect’s previous drilling results with three separate massive sulphide zones in the same hole including 9.55m grading 2.07 per cent nickel, 1.27 per cent copper and 0.11 per cent cobalt from 158.60m and 2.80m grading 2.84 per cent nickel, 2.06 per cent copper and 0.15 per cent cobalt from 193.10m down hole.
The third and longer 19.80m-wide zone went an impressive 2.71 per cent nickel, 1.79 per cent copper and 0.13 per cent cobalt from 227.80m down hole.
Legend Managing Director, Mark Wilson said: “The pay-dirt grades returned over 35.95m in hole 17 confirm this to be the best hole drilled at Mawson to date.”
“The mineralisation remains open to the northeast, southwest and east of the current diamond drilling and requires further analysis of all datasets prior to planning step out RC/diamond holes.”
Another hole, about 40m north of hole 17, returned a 7.70m-wide zone grading 1.29 per cent nickel, 0.68 per cent copper and 0.07 per cent cobalt from 249.90 down hole.
Legend’s drilling update today also included a nearly 13m zone of visible nickel and copper sulphides from 103.7m with assays still pending for this hole drilled underneath “hole 8”, which was previously reported to contain a combined 107.8m of mineralisation in eight separate zones from 91m depth.
Legend’s Rockford project is 120km northeast of IGO’s revered Nova-Bollinger nickel-copper discovery and 100km south of Tropicana that is operated by AngloGold Ashanti and IGO.
The much-heralded discovery of the extraordinary Nova nickel-copper deposit by Sirius in 2012 was the catalyst that saw a swathe of would-be explorer’s flock to the Fraser Range to peg their own piece of it.
At the time the Fraser Range became West Australia’s hottest exploration spot, driven by Sirius’ textbook discovery, which was a fusion of science and good old-fashioned boot leather.
An isolated WA Government soil sample running 271 parts per million nickel and just 90 parts per million copper that was coincident with an “eye-shaped” geophysical anomaly eventually became the Nova discovery - a 13.2 million tonne resource grading 2 per cent nickel, 0.8 copper and 0.07 per cent cobalt.
Mawson is located about 280km east of Kalgoorlie and much of the project is under a JV agreement between Legend, who holds 70% and Western Australia’s best known “prospector”, Mark Creasy, who holds the balance.
An air core rig is also on site at Rockford and an RC rig is slated to drill about 3,000 metres across the project.
Legend’s dogged determination to methodically vector in on the source of the mineralisation at Mawson, partially by interpreting and re-interpreting the gravity and magnetics before running downhole electromagnetics to edge ever closer to the honeypot has been a masterclass in how you find these elusive deposits that normally send companies broke before presenting themselves.
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