Meeka’s bid to make Tropicana-like discovery intensifies with big gold hits

Meeka Gold’s bid to find a Tropicana-like gold discovery on WA’s Albany Fraser Belt is intensifying, with big shallow gold hits pointing to the potential for a large-scale find at its Circle Valley project near Esperance.

Testing below a 1.2km by 400m zone of regolith gold, assays from recent RC drilling by Meeka (ASX:MEK) have come up trumps.

They include strikes of 24m at 1.21g/t from just 24m in hole 22CVRC010, 16m at 3.06g/t from 32m, including a high-grade segment of 4m at 10.8g/t in hole 22CVRC009, and 10m at 4.72g/t from 120m in 22CVRC008, including 4m at 10.2g/t.

That last one ends in mineralisation, meaning the gold is likely to keep on going at depth.

They are no flash in the pan either, with results sitting along strike and down dip from the previously reported 22CVRC001, where new 1m samples returned an intercept of 23m at 5.09g/t from 13m, including 10m at 9.35g/t and 7m at 2.91g/t.

Tropical bliss

Though it’s located hundreds of kilometres away near the seaside town of Esperance, Circle Valley may represent one of the best prospects yet to follow up AngloGold Ashanti and IGO’s rich Tropicana gold discovery.

Found 300km east of Kalgoorlie in the Great Victoria Desert in 2005, the 5Moz gold mine is the most prolific gold find in WA of the 21^st century and has regularly been one of the country’s five largest producing mines.

But major follow-ups have eluded a host of explorers.

Circle Valley is interesting because it bears some clear geological similarities. Like Tropicana its mineralisation is hosted in gneiss within pyrite-biotite shear zones, and its higher grade gold is associated with k-feldspar alteration.

The higher grade rocks at Circle Valley sit within a 10-80m thick zone of lower grade gold of around and about 0.1g/t which thickens and thins along strike, stretching for at least 700m and still open in all directions.

“These results continue to support our thesis that the geology at Circle Valley is fertile for gold mineralisation and that the project remains vastly underexplored and is now the subject of systematic and focussed exploration for the first time,” Meeka Gold CEO Tim Davidson said.

The company is encouraged by the data that is being collected during the drilling and sampling process as it continues to indicate similarities between the geology and alteration present at Circle Valley, and that which is present at the Tropicana deposit to the northeast (currently host to 4.9Moz gold Mineral Resource).

“We look forward to updating shareholders with respect to this developing exploration story over the coming weeks.”

Assays for step-out holes to the north and west of the known mineralisation are still pending, with drilling of additional step-out holes to the north is underway.

This article was developed in collaboration with Meeka Gold, 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.