Pic: John W Banagan / Stone via Getty Images
Mining
Special Report: Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX) has completed an extensive 12,436m ‘baseline’ drilling program testing five early stage gold targets at the Lucky Strike and Hang Glider Hill exploration hubs.
Lefroy is taking a methodical approach to ‘generative’ (greenfields, or untouched) exploration in the hunt for Kalgoorlie’s next multi-million-ounce gold camp.
Its wholly owned Eastern Lefroy tenements cover the regional Mt Monger Fault, which the company believes is prospective for large gold deposits.
Here, the company has already unearthed a couple of exciting early stage discoveries at Lucky Strike and Hang Glider Hill.
But much of the project area remains underexplored, despite neighbouring some of Western Australia’s most lucrative gold mines.
This most recent drilling program, complemented by an auger (very shallow drilling) program currently underway over the entire 17km of strike between Lucky Strike and Hang Glider Hill, is designed to highlight gold targets for follow up drilling.
“Eastern Lefroy exploration in the past year has focused on increasing our knowledge of the locations where we demonstrated early success,” Lefroy chairman Gordon Galt says.
“This strategy defined gold resources sufficient for exploitation – which we are now pursuing – but left very large areas of our tenement parcel unexplored.
“This latest round of exploration has consisted mainly of sampling the regolith beneath the transported cover to advance our understanding of the overall prospectivity of our areas.”
In September 2019, Lefroy announced its best ever intersection at Lucky Strike — 18m grading 6.57 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 68m including a 4m chunk grading an incredible 21.9g/t.
This most recent drilling program has now significantly extended the gold mineralised trend at Lucky Strike by ~700m to 3,800m strike length.
Lefroy is targeting a type of rock called ‘’banded iron formation’, or BIF, which is the primary host for gold mineralisation at the recently established 79,600oz Lucky Strike gold resource.
The drilling discovered multiple BIF’s under ~10-15m of transported cover, which provides confidence they continue a further 1.3km to the southeast toward the tenement boundary.
Significant early stage results include 13m at 0.39g/t gold from 41m, including 1m at 2.11g/t from 52m.
These results support Lefroy’s interpretation that more gold systems analogous to the Lucky Strike resource can be discovered along the Lucky Strike BIF trend.
Havelock is a target generated in 2018, located 1.2km from Lucky Strike.
Drilling completed in July has intercepted strong quartz veining and highly oxidised BIF, similar to the host rocks at Lucky Strike.
The best result was 5m at 1.2g/t gold from 50m.
The discovery of gold at Havelock is “a significant breakthrough” that presents a new opportunity for discovery along a 7.7km BIF trend twice as long as the Lucky Strike BIF trend, Lefroy says.
And next to the Havelock trend lies another parallel magnetic horizon interpreted to be another BIF.
This trend called Erinmore, which represents a further 5.2km of BIF strike length, has not been drill tested by the company:
17km away from Lucky Strike is Hang Glider Hill, where Lefroy recently uncovered a gold anomaly about 500m wide and 2km long (so far). This includes a high-grade ‘core’ 400m long.
The new first pass 129-hole drill program was designed to evaluate multiple gold in auger anomalies that define two strong trends.
Results, including 11m at 0.19g/t gold, confirm Lefroy’s interpretation that the Hang Glider Hill Fault is a significant mineralised structural trend.
Next steps include concentrating exploration on the corridor straddling the Hang Glider Hill fault, 3.5km along strike of Hang Glider Hill.
Planning is underway and will include aircore and reverse circulation drilling across the fault, as well as focused diamond drilling.
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