ASX-listed Zuleika Gold is nearing the halfway mark of a major drilling campaign at projects in the historic mining camps of the Kundana and Menzies goldfields, with results set to start flowing for more than 100 aircore and reverse circulation holes at its flagship Paradigm East project just east of ASX gold major Northern Star Resources’ Paradigm mine.
Zuleika said it had completed about 14,000m of a planned 30,000m of aircore and RC drilling at the Zuleika and Credo projects near Broad Arrow, north of Kalgoorlie.
A key focus of the drilling is Paradigm East, near an existing open pit mine and 1.5km east of Northern Star’s Paradigm operation, and Credo, just west of Broad Arrow. Other targets of the current campaign are Browns Dam, Breakaway Dam, Carnage, Little T and Castle Hill East. Zuleika Gold also a blueprint for search programmes at Menzies, Goongarrie and Ruby Plains.
The company has undertaken almost 7,000m of drilling at Paradigm East, with a further 11 RC holes and 1,390m planned to an average depth of 126m. The holes are designed as follow-ups to high-grade hits reported earlier this year, including the most recent 4m grading 17.5 g/t gold from 75m, with 1m at 66.1 g/t from 76m, and 11m at 3.9 g/t from 48m including 6m at 6.6 g/t from 52m.
At Credo, only 5km west of the large Paddington mine and mill operated by Norton Gold Fields, Zuleika is following up on strong gold soil anomalies reported earlier this year. The company is waiting for results from 16 aircore holes drilled so far.
Early this year Zuleika changed its name from Dampier Gold to reflect its major joint venture deal with Torian Resources to earn a 75 per cent interest in the Zuleika and Credo permits, so Torian could focus on advancing its Mt Stirling gold project near Leonora.
Under the deal Torian reportedly agreed to reduce Zuleika’s cost to earn the 75 per cent stake from a commitment of $4 million down to $1 million.
Zuleika says drilling has also begun at Breakaway Dam, south of Paradigm East and near the historical Breakaway Dam mine. It is about 700m into a 4,400m program at Breakaway Dam.
Meanwhile, an AC drill programme is set for the Menzies project, immediately west of the town of Menzies, where significant gold anomalism has been identified from auger sampling in 2020.
Zuleika Gold is also following up auger sampling gold anomalism outlined in 2020 at Goongarrie with new auger drilling, while at Ruby Plains, south-east of Halls Creek in WA’s Kimberley region, regional-scale surface geochemistry work is set to test for paleo-placer gold targets.
Zuleika said it was targeting areas with known high-grade mineralisation through to geophysical target areas with no effective past exploration. It plans some RC target drilling to follow up on bedrock anomalism and high-grade aircore results.
Zuleika Gold Managing Director Annie Guo said: “We continue to get exploration success due to consistently intersecting hydrothermal systems with strong anomalous gold results along the Zuleika Shear and elsewhere along parallel mineralisation identified in aircore holes.”
“The relatively shallow initial aircore programme is now complete at our flagship project at Paradigm East and Browns Dam and this is being followed up with deep reverse circulation drilling designed to test the persistence of gold mineralisation identified in the aircore holes.”
Ms Guo said Zuleika returned to Credo Well with a RC drill rig and had drilled to test the north-east/south-west striking anomaly between a combined JORC resource of 12,250 ounces with an average grade of 4.41 g/t at Credo Well and Credo Well North. The two advanced project areas and resources are said to fall at the intersection of north-east structures with a north-west trending anticline representing a “high-grade gold corridor”.
She said an aircore programme had commenced on a “new and exciting prospect” at Breakaway Dam, adjacent to Norton Gold’s Breakaway Dam mine.
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By Matt Birney
