Legend nails Fraser Range hole

After a year or two of scientific vectoring in on a nickel ore body in the famed Fraser Ranges, things are hotting up now for ASX-listed Legend Mining after it hit what may well be pay dirt in its latest drill campaign at the Rockford project. The company said this week it had hit an impressive, combined 42 metres worth of nickel and copper sulphides intersected in one hole at the Mawson prospect. 

Legend Managing Director Mark Wilson said: “Legend’s 2020 field season has had a spectacular start. The three massive sulphide intercepts clearly stamp this hole as the most significant and exciting discovery in the Fraser Range post Nova. It has been a true team effort, hats off to all concerned!” 

The diamond hole intersected five separate zones of nickel - copper massive sulphide mineralisation, with average overall widths of 8.3m from 148m downhole with a maximum interval of 12.8m from 234.9m downhole.

The hole was drilled to follow up the down plunge extension of a cracking drill hit from last year of nearly 15m grading 1.07% nickel, 0.75% copper and 0.06% cobalt from 114 meters downhole. 

Now comes the finger biting wait as Legend technocrats analyse the hole and fast track the samples to the lab, but at face value this is looking like it may be a significant event for the Mark Wilson led company. 

Wilson said that two separate massive sulphide intervals combined from between 148m and 164.2m down hole correspond well to the very strong “off-hole” electromagnetic anomaly that was modelled 80m from the initial 15m discovery hole. 

The diamond rig has now moved onto Legend’s next nickel-copper target and is churning away underneath a highly anomalous surface nickel and copper geochemical anomaly. 

Legend also has an air core rig on site and is planning to pump out about 130 first pass holes that will give Geologists a closer look under the weathered cover and hopefully throw up a few more targets to test. 

Legend management has previously said that Mawson has the smell of a “large mineralised system” and with the famed Nova-Bollinger nickel-copper discovery in the same region, big massive sulphide intersections like this are bound to quicken a few pulses around the Legend office. 

Perhaps most importantly, the geology observed in the new diamond hole  shows the presence of nickel-copper sulphides within olivine-rich mafic and ultramafic rocks. 

These are the same rock types that play host to the Nova-Bollinger deposit, about 120km to the southwest of Rockford. Nova turned Sirius Resources into a household name in 2012 and a number of hopefuls have come and gone since then with illusions of grandeur whilst Legend stayed the distance and just focussed on the science, vectoring in bit by bit. 

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact : matt.birney@businessnews.com.au