ASX-listed gold and base metals explorer, Surefire Resources has just completed the first phase of a major RC drilling campaign that comprised two programs at its exciting Yidby Road gold project in WA’s Murchison province. The maiden 20-hole program late last year returned stellar, broad drill intersections of 56 metres at an average grade of 1.97 grams per tonne gold from 44m including 4m at 14.47 g/t and 40m going 3.01 g/t from 24m including 4m at 26.57 g/t.
Other notable drill hits from the maiden round of RC drilling are 36m at 1.51 g/t gold from 32m including 5m at 5.86 g/t, 17m at 1.74 g/t from 51m including 4m at 5.13 g/t and 16m at 1.51 g/t from 50m including 4m at 4.18 g/t.
Perth-based Surefire says most of the holes in the most recent 40-hole round of follow-up drilling intersected massive quartz-sulphide veining and felsic porphyry structures across wide intervals.
The gold mineralised zone at Yidby Road has now been tested over a strike length of more than 200m and to 200m depth and remains open in all directions, according to the company.
Initial assays from the 6,000m follow-up RC program are expected shortly and if Surefire can even get close to replicating the maiden drill program numbers from last year, things will get interesting quickly for the $27 million market-capped company.
Surefire says it will immediately gear up for the next phase of drilling at Yidby Road, subject to the widths and grades encountered in round two checking out.
An east-dipping, mineralised zone straddling the boundary between the sheared ultramafic and mafic rocks and a large felsic porphyry intrusion harboured the stand-out intercepts from round one.
Surefire Resources Managing Director, Vladimir Nikolaenko said: “We are eagerly awaiting the initial results of our Yidby Road gold project, having intersected extensions of the mineralised lode structures along strike from and at depth below the previous thick and high-grade intersections.”
Market watchers will also be keeping a close eye on the initial follow-up drill results from Yidby Road for any sign that Surefire has unearthed a major gold system.
The 114-square-kilometre Yidby Road project area, which sits within the southern part of the Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt, is surrounded by several significant gold projects including Mount Gibson, Minjar and Kirkalocka.
Surefire has also kicked off an aeromagnetic survey over the two northern tenements at its Perenjori gold and base metals project approximately 100km west of the Yidby Road gold discovery.
The company says it will look to uncover untested extensions to the Koolanooka greenstone belt and interpreted structures at Perenjori by flying 5,480 line kilometres at 50m line spacings across the tenements.
Preliminary interpretation of regional magnetics indicates that a greater than 25km untested greenstone belt lies within the company’s Kadji tenement and extends into the adjoining tenement.
Management says the interpreted greenstone is bounded by major north-west trending fault structures and truncated and dislocated to the west at the northern end of the Kadji tenement.
According to Surefire, these major structures are analogous to the Yidby Road structural corridor and are highly prospective for gold mineralisation.
The company says the under-explored Perenjori tenements overlie the Koolanooka greenstone belt within a typical granite-greenstone terrain of the southern Murchison geological province of the Archaean Yilgarn Craton.
Gold, base metals and iron ore deposits in the region include the Deflector gold mine 30km to the north, the Karara iron ore deposit 30km to the east and the Golden Grove base metals deposits 50km to the north-east.
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