Novo launches Victorian gold drilling blitz

Toronto-listed gold miner and explorer, Novo Resources has unleashed the rig for a 2,000 metre drilling blitz to test a plethora of targets at its 50 per cent owned Malmsbury gold project in Victoria. The project hosts more than 1,500 historical gold workings with past drilling at the tenure throwing up some significant mineralised intercepts including an impressive 4.1m grading 13.1 grams per tonne gold from 66.3m at the Leven Star trend.

Another historical hole at Leven Start delivered a 7m strike going 4.84 g/t gold from 54m, including a richer 3m interval at 9.38 g/t gold.

The now commenced drilling campaign comes on the back of extensive target definition works undertaken at the under-explored Malmsbury project throughout 2021 by Novo and its joint venture partner, GBM Resources.

A combination of geological mapping, soil and rock chip sampling, a review of historical drill core and 3D modelling of historical data was conducted to light up a swathe of gold targets to sink the drill bit into.

Novo expects the drilling to be wrapped up by the end of the first quarter of 2022.

The campaign will follow-up on the high-grade historical hits at Leven Star and test for potential extensions of mineralisation at the prospect. Curiously, rock chip sampling at the Leven Star returned assays grading as high as 27.1 g/t gold and 14.2 g/t gold.

One 350m hole is designed to intersect a junction between numerous mineralised trends, including Leven Star, where mapping and sampling highlighted a strong gold and multi-commodity geochemical anomaly in an area showing intense quartz veining and silica alteration at surface.

A 400m hole will also test the newly discovered Missing Link Granite prospect where Novo and GBM are targeting an intrusion-related gold system and orogenic vein style mineralisation.

Notably, an historical hole at Missing Link returned a 23m intercept going 0.46 g/t gold from 18m.

GBM’s and Novo’s sampling of quartz veins located within the granite at Missing Link also delivered high-grade mineralisation grading up to 9.74 g/t gold.

Novo believes the prospect could be geologically akin to ASX-listed AuStar Gold’s Morning Star mine in Victoria where more than 800,000 ounces at a cracking 26.5 g/t gold were produced in the past.

The drilling at Malmsbury will also target historical gold workings and areas where elevated gold mineralisation was returned from the joint venture’s recent sampling campaign.

Malmsbury lies in the Central Victoria Goldfields where more than 61 million ounces of gold have been historically mined, according to GBM.

Recent discoveries in the region include Kirkland Lake’s Fosterville gold mine where a mammoth 6.8 million ounces of the precious yellow metal grading 7.4 g/t gold have been defined.

In addition to its developing conglomerate gold mine in WA’s Pilbara region, Novo just might make its mark in the uber-rich gold region of Victoria also if the drilling onslaught at Malmsbury delivers the goods.

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