Middle Island unearths new gold deposit at Sandstone

ASX-Listed Middle Island Resources has defined a shallow new gold deposit at the McIntyre prospect, which is just one of fourteen targets within its wholly owned Sandstone gold project, located in central WA.  New, consistent shallow drill intercepts from the current RC drill program including 24m grading 1.66 grams per tonne, 23m at 1.40g/t, 11m at 1.39g/t and 18m going 1.35g/t gold have delivered a second deposit in a week.

Drill intercepts in another of Middle Island’s cluster of three proximal gold prospects known as McClaren, also returned 4m at a staggering 90.6g/t gold and 8m going 3.35g/t, setting up yet another satellite gold deposit in addition to McIntyre.

The cluster of gold prospects, McIntyre, McClaren and Ridge are all hosted in the Shillington banded iron formation within a mining lease located just 2.5km from Middle Island’s wholly-owned Sandstone gold processing plant.  McIntyre and McClaren are linked by a northeast-trending corridor of host rock deformation and quartz veining.

With $2.7 million in cash and investments available to the company, management said it was well funded to continue exploration at Sandstone and with a swag of solid numbers now on the table for dissection, it doesn’t look like there are any good reasons to shut the rig down any time soon.

The current 13,400m RC drilling program is looking to target up to fourteen deposits and prospects within the project area with a view to potentially tabling a resource upgrade to support the recommissioning of the old Sandstone mill.

Middle Island Managing Director, Rick Yeates said: “The broad, consistent gold intercepts returned from Phase 1 RC drilling at the McIntyre prospect provide further exciting encouragement that the prospect may well prove to represent a second new, low strip ratio, open pit deposit to supplement the planned Sandstone mill recommissioning inventory.”

“Recently completed geological mapping of the proximal McIntyre, McClaren and Ridge prospects, all of which are hosted in the Shillington BIF package, reveal a structural link between the McIntyre and McClaren prospects that offers opportunities for resource extensions to both.”

These solid new drill intercepts will likely lead to another decent resource upgrade for Middle Island, following up on the half a million-ounce increase recently delivered at its Two Mile Hill Deeps deposit. 

The total mineral resource at the project now stands at 624,000 ounces of gold and the presence of the old mill on site that can be refurbished, sets this project well apart from the myriad of other stranded deposits that are dotted around Western Australia.

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