Pic: Tyler Stableford / Stone via Getty Images
Impact is setting up for the shot at its Burns lookalike
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Impact is laying the groundwork to start drilling at the Doonia gold project near Kambalda, Western Australia, with a Heritage Survey kicking off this week.
The survey by the Ngadju Group will be carried out in preparation for a 3,000m reverse circulation drill program that will test a large and significant gold+bismuth soil geochemistry anomaly that is expected to start in November.
Notably, the anomaly has strong geophysical and geochemical similarities to the recent Burns discovery about 20km to the west.
Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) noted that all other approvals for the drilling are already in place and a drilling contract is being negotiated.
“We have worked hard to bring the drill program at Doonia forward following the severe hampering of progress at our flagship Broken Hill project caused by the COVID restrictions in New South Wales,” managing director Mike Jones said.
“The target at Doonia is well defined and is a compelling geochemical and geophysical target. We are in advanced negotiations for a drilling contract and are aiming to have the rig turning in November.
“The traditional owners of the land at Doonia, the Ngadju Group, continue to be very good to deal with and we thank them for their efforts in organising the survey and also acknowledge their connection to country there.”
Doonia Project
Impact identified the Doonia project during a review of the Eastern Goldfields for intrusion-hosted gold deposits in light of De Grey Mining’s (ASX:DEG) giant Hemi discovery in the Pilbara.
It was then enhanced by Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX) uncovering significant gold-copper-magnetite mineralisation hosted by a magnetic porphyry intrusion at the Burns project.
The company noted that Burns is a new style of mineralisation within this part of the Eastern Goldfields that may represent a new model for further similar discoveries.
It added that both Doonia and Burns were actually first identified in the same regional exploration program carried out by WMC in the 1990, where broad-spaced aircore drilling returned modest gold anomalism.
However, neither area was followed up at that time.
An ovoid magnetic anomaly is interpreted to be at least 6km by 6km and is thought to be a magnetic intrusion which has been placed at some depth into the metasedimentary rocks that underlie most of the project area.
A number of smaller well-defined magnetic anomalies also occur above the central east part of the larger anomaly.
These have short strike lengths and are interpreted as possible near-surface magnetic porphyry intrusions that may be related to and sourced from the larger buried intrusion.
These smaller anomalies are also where the soil geochemistry that will be the target of the upcoming drilling is centred over.
This article was developed in collaboration with Impact Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
