Gold: Musgrave is hunting gold under a salt lake; Venus, Rox join forces

Exploring for gold on salt lakes can be a logistical nightmare – which is probably why so many remain underexplored, regardless of how prospective they are.

But advances in exploration tech has made previously difficult mineralised areas accessible to WA explorers like Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX) or Musgrave Minerals (ASX:MGV).

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Musgrave believes that a large mineralised gold system lies hidden deep under this massive salt lake called Austin, near Cue in WA:

Fun fact: There’s an abandoned town called Austin right in the middle of the lake. Pic: Google Earth

So far, shallower aircore drilling has extended the gold zone at its Lake Austin North project to more than 3km.

Highlights of the latest campaign included 50m at 1.1g/t gold, 114m from surface, with many holes finishing in mineralisation.

Musgrave boss Rob Waugh says the so-called A-Zone gold anomaly now extends for over 3km in strike, with new targets totalling about 8km of combined basement strike in the Lake Austin North area.

Planning is under way to drill test these lake targets.

Two phases of deeper diamond drilling have been completed to follow up shallower drilling highlights, like 5m at 15.4g/t gold from 135m.

So far, the basement source of high-grade mineralisation is still undefined.

But only ~500m of this strike has seen any basement (deep) drilling; that’s just 6 per cent of the target area, says Waugh.

“These [latest] aircore results continue to show the large size of the gold system at Lake Austin North and support the Company’s view on the prospectivity of this new undercover gold system,” he says.

“The upside is huge.”

In other gold news today:

A joint venture between Venus Metals (ASX:VMC) and Rox Resources (ASX: RXL) is drilling at the Youanmi gold project in WA. They will focus on shallow high-grade gold defined by historical drilling, as well as testing extensions at two key gold prospects, ‘Currans North’ and ‘Red White and Blue Middle Workings’. Shallow drilling is also planned at the Taylor’s Reef discovery, where trenching recently uncovered strongly gold-mineralised vein quartz. This initial drilling is expected to be completed by early June.

High grade drilling has pinpointed multiple new targets at the Katanning gold project (KGP), Ausgold (ASX:AUC), says. The 23-hole campaign was designed to add to the current 1.04moz resource at KGP by testing new areas.

“The reconnaissance RC drilling has produced encouraging gold grades and intersected mineralisation near to surface suggesting the southern portion of the KGP has the potential to host significant gold mineralisation,” says Ausgold’s Matthew Greentree. “This untested potential along the Jinkas trend at the Jackson and Lukin prospects could deliver material additions to the KGP’s global resource.”