Victory Mines is zeroing in on a potentially serious porphyry copper-gold discovery at its Coogee project in WA. The target is located a mere 15 kilometres north-west of Lefroy’s coveted Burns discovery and comes courtesy of a recent re-evaluation of the company’s datasets. The review has identified a nest of magnetic targets sitting to the north of the Coogee open pit, with geological logging of recent drilling revealing a rich dioritic porphyry stock.
Resampling of Victory’s drill spoil has returned a bounty of copper and gold mineralisation including an intercept of 15 metres at 1 per cent copper and 1.49 grams per tonne gold from only 80m down-hole.
The emerging find at Coogee comes in light of a rash of intrusive-related discoveries in Western Australia with the likes of De Grey Mining now drilling out a multi-million-ounce intrusive style resource in the Pilbara whilst a little closer to home, Lefroy Exploration continues to return a swag of eye-catching intercepts at its Burns prospect including 38m at a stunning 7.63 g/t gold and 0.56 per cent copper from 134m down-hole.
Victory’s resampling of its extensional drilling at Coogee shows a clear spatial association between the underlying porphyry targets and copper-gold mineralisation, with additional intercepts including 6m at 1.95 per cent copper and 2.83 g/t gold from 90m and 34m at 0.36 per cent copper from just 12m down-hole.
Victory Mines Executive Director, Matthew Blake said: “Whilst substantial exploration work still remains to be conducted, Victory believes that the Coogee project could now be an emerging new Archaean copper‐gold system. These substantial copper and gold results provide impetus for the company to undertake the next phase of its drilling campaign of 6,000m RC and diamond drilling anticipated to commence in the second half of May.”
Victory’s Coogee gold project is situated 55km south-east of Kalgoorlie in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. The project was originally developed by Ramelius Resources in 2013, with the mid-tier miner excavating a small open pit within the project tenure and extracting 20,400 ounces of high-grade gold. The mine was mothballed in 2014 due to the gold price sliding towards US$1,200 per ounce.
After lying dormant for 6 years, Victory picked up Coogee in 2020 and immediately set about drilling below and along strike from the open cut. Exploration quickly returned a series of impressive gold-rich drill intercepts including 17m at 3.31 g/t gold from 97m, 20m at 2.22 g/t gold from 92m and a high-grade 3m at 7.11 g/t gold from only 42m down-hole.
However, Lefroy’s discovery of the Burns porphyry down the road has prompted Victory to look at the Coogee project with new eyes. The company’s exploration to date has focussed on the Coogee Shear Zone that hosts gold in a classic Eastern Goldfields structural environment, however more recent work began to probe the Coogee North porphyry target just over 200m north of the old open cut.
The northern most drill holes testing the shear have intersected an altered porphyritic diorite intrusive, similar to the host rocks at Hemi and the massive Boddington mine in the south-west of WA. The mineralisation within the diorite is typical of this style of intrusive deposit and is composed of a melange of copper sulphides including chalcopyrite and bornite, with pyrite thrown in for good measure.
Interestingly, the mineralisation at Coogee North is also accompanied by a distinct alteration assemblage including iron oxides, epidote and magnetite, which will potentially provide both a visual and geophysical guide for ongoing exploration.
With the company now waiting for the copper assays from a further 13 drill holes and racing to secure rigs for a new 6,000m drilling program to test Coogee North in the weeks ahead, Victory looks set to continue unearthing its new copper-gold discovery in WA – the only question now is just how big could this thing be.
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