Aruma Resources has completed the latest phase of drilling at its Salmon Gums gold project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region, with an initial assessment of drill core showing interception of targeted quartz veins at the company’s high-grade Thistle prospect.
The seven completed drillholes at the priority prospect were designed with differing orientations in a bid to help decipher the high-grade gold mineralisation extent and controls. The program was planned to follow up and extend previous bonanza-grade gold intersections that included 5m at a spectacular 50.2 grams per tonne in one hole, with some numbers running as high as an eye-watering 224g/t gold.
Assays have been sent for laboratory assessment and Aruma is now eagerly awaiting the results.
However, visual assessment of the core from the latest drilling indicates that the target pyrrhotite-pyrite-arsenopyrite-bearing quartz veins have been intersected in six of the seven completed holes … and that is a main characteristic of Norseman-style gold mineralisation.
The veins are hosted within a sequence of mafic to volcaniclastic units with rheological differences that have allowed the deposition of the veins. The presence of the sulphide minerals pyrrhotite, pyrite and arsenopyrite within and near the quartz veins is highly encouraging as it may indicate the presence of gold.
The company’s 100 per cent-held Salmon Gums project covers some 360 square kilometres and is a mere 60km south of Norseman. Importantly, the project is in the same stratigraphy and neighbourhood as Pantoro’s Scotia project, which has a mineral resource of 1 million ounces of gold and an ore reserve of 535,000 ounces.
Aruma’s latest campaign is the culmination of previous drilling episodes, with each one extending the gold footprint and providing encouragement to further delineate the gold resource. The company’s drilling programs at Salmon Gums have reliably returned many intersections of gold mineralisation along the Thistle trend and along the Iris trend to the north of Thistle.
On receipt of assay results, management will evaluate and model the available data from all its drilling programs, in addition to other pertinent geological data, to refine plans for further drilling that will be designed to extend the project’s high-grade mineralised footprint.
It now seems just a matter of time before Aruma proves up its high-grade gold resource at Salmon Gums. Surely, the bonanza grades already discovered indicate that both the metaphorical and literal pots of gold are not too far away.
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By Steve Butler
