Venus Metals Corporation has its drill bit spinning again, this time at its historical Bellchambers gold deposit in the WA Goldfields and part of the company’s Sandstone gold project.
The project is on a 208 square kilometre tenement, 90 per cent owned by Venus and located 500km north-east of Perth and 23km south-west of the tiny prospecting town of Sandstone.
The program will target structurally controlled gold mineralisation and will test the depth continuation of mineralisation intersected in late 2020 from a nine-hole drilling program totalling 1176m.
That campaign resulted in a substantial increase in Bellchambers’ JORC-compliant indicated mineral resource. The new resource figure was 536,000 tonnes going 1.27 grams per tonne golds for 21,800 ounces contained gold, representing a 29 per cent jump in ounces.
The headlining intersections from the drilling were 26m at 1.47 g/t gold from 79m, 20m at 1.41 g/t gold from 71m and 11m at 1.42 g/t gold from 85m.
Bellchambers is approximately two kilometres east of the Youanmi shear zone and 70km by road north-east of Venus’ Youanmi gold project.
Its gold mineralisation and that of its satellite deposit, Range View which was drilled last year, is hosted within a north-easterly trending sequence of sheared sediments and mafic rocks. Venus believes the mineralisation shows similarities with common banded iron formation–hosted gold mineralisation that is also reported from the central section of the Sandstone greenstone belt, about 14km from Range View.
Bellchambers has a gold-mining history dating back to the early part of the twentieth century with production totalling 3688 ounces from 5620 tonnes of ore at a very respectable 21 g/t.
Venus’ tenement covers most of this mining area.
The company is also simultaneously drilling its Midway deposit at the nearby Youanmi gold project which it co-owns with Rox Resources. A planned 16,000m RC and 7000m diamond drill campaign, scheduled to run till April, has already returned good results including 6.76m at 15.4 g/t gold from 169m and 3.7, at 10.25 g/t gold from 405m.
Not satisfied with only chasing gold, Venus this month kicked off an RC campaign at its Youanmi lithium project, testing a new target at Mandindi North located within a granite-greenstone contact belt at the Youanmi greenstone belt. Drilling will also test the interpreted down-dip extension of lithium-bearing pegmatite at the project’s Central prospect.
With so many drill bits spinning, Venus will have bookshelves creaking when the assay results and resulting news flow start to roll in.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
