Okapi Resources has nailed down a string of gold targets at its Mount Day prospect in Western Australia. Infill soil sampling has confirmed the presence of a 1,500 metre-long, cohesive gold trend, which has consistently returned anomalous values of the precious metal. The company is now working up the geochemical target as it prepares to drill test the anomaly in the latter half of this year.
Okapi recently completed sampling on 100m-by-25m centres across the Mount Day anomaly, generating 410 new samples and confirming the presence of gold mineralisation at more than four-times background levels. Whilst the gold trend extends over more than 1.5km of strike and is up to 300m wide, previous sampling also shows the system remains open to the north and extends into Okapi’s new tenement application.
Okapi Resources Executive Director, David Nour said: “We are pleased with the results from this exploration work, confirming the gold-in-soil anomaly extending over 1.5km strike. Further exploration work at the tenement is currently being planned to define structures and possible drill targets.”
“Meanwhile, we are nearing completion of our application process for the adjacent tenement and drilling at the Enmore gold project expected to begin in June.”
Okapi’s Mount Day project is located on the Lake Johnston greenstone belt in southern WA. Lake Johnson is strategically situated between the Southern Cross belt in the west, which hosts multiple economic nickel, gold and lithium occurrences and the Norseman greenstone belt to the east, which is arguably one of the premier nickel and gold terranes in Australia.
The Lake Johnson greenstone belt remains relatively untouched by modern exploration and despite having produced two significant nickel mines, namely the Maggie Hays and Emily Ann operations, the terrane has yet to produce a gold deposit – a curious anomaly in WA’s gold-rich Yilgarn Craton.
The company’s project area at Mount Day features two tenements, the northern tenement being a wholly-owned application which is moving towards approval with the WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, while the southern tenement is a joint venture with Lithium Australia, with Okapi currently earning 75 per cent of the granted lease.
Okapi uncovered the Mount Day gold trend following successful compilation and analysis of historical exploration data across the region. The data initially outlined a broad gold-in-soil anomaly that extended over more than 10km of strike. The subsequent field program identified artisanal workings associated with the Mount Day anomalies that have returned rock chip samples grading over 10 g/t gold.
In addition, historical wide-spaced drilling across the Mount Day trend has also returned high-grade gold intercepts including 2m at an impressive 11.04 g/t gold from only 26m down-hole. Drilling is now being planned to follow up on this result and begin systematically defining the near-surface gold mineralisation across the Mount Day Trend.
With surface gold mineralisation extending over more than 1km of strike and historical drilling returning high-grade gold, Okapi looks to be at the right address at Lake Johnson and with drilling set to kick off in the months ahead, the company is giving itself a fighting chance of uncovering the first gold deposit in this underexplored terrane.
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