Old dirt reveals 10km zone of gold and silver at Auravelle’s Nuckulla Hill project

• Auravelle review identifies 10km gold-silver target zone at Nuckulla Hill in Gawler Craton
• Anomalies sit within same Yalbrinda Shear Zone as Barton Gold’s 1.6Moz Tunkillia deposit
• Follow-up drilling planned for November with new soil assays due in December

Special Report: Auravelle Metals’ review of historical soil sampling at its Nuckulla Hill project in South Australia’s Gawler Craton has identified a 10km long area of high priority gold and silver targets.

What’s noteworthy is that these extensive anomalies sit within the Yarlbrinda Shear Zone that also hosts Barton Gold’s (ASX:BGD) 1.6Moz Tunkillia gold deposit and other gold prospects.

Auravelle Metals (ASX:AUV) adds that many of the gold and silver anomalies are coincident, which significantly enhances their prospectivity.

Their size and scale also reinforce the potential of the area where recent drilling at the Sheoak prospect returned assays of up to 6m grading 8g/t gold from 71m including 1m at 25.4g/t gold.

Additionally, the review also highlighted an additional two high priority areas for follow up drilling at Bimba West and Sauna.

“Coincident gold and silver anomalies in the Gawler Craton have been shown to be key pathfinders for identifying large gold systems, including the large “plus million ounce” Tunkillia and Challenger gold deposits,” managing director Andrew Muir said.

“The identification of high priority large-scale gold-silver anomalies at Nuckulla Hill therefore adds to our already strong pipeline of precious metals prospects that will be drill tested over the coming six months.”

Old and new soil sampling

The historical soil sampling was completed between 2011 and 2015 by Doray Minerals with over 2100 samples collected.

This tested a broader area than just the Yarlbrinda Shear Zone and follows on from calcrete sampling that was completed in the 1990s.

While some of the gold soil anomalies are coincident with the calcrete anomalies, such as Bimba, some of the soil data has generated anomalies where the calcrete returned low values, such as Sheoak East, and to the immediate west of Bimba.

Notably, Sauna has a large silver anomaly in the calcrete sampling that is also reflected in the soil sampling.

The review demonstrated the potential for multiple different datasets to assist drill targeting, as demonstrated by the soil sampling identifying anomalies not recognised by the calcrete sampling.

It validates the need for large soil sampling programs such as the one that AUV has just completed at both Nuckulla Hill and Tunkillia North.

This program collected 1227 samples over the two projects, which have historically lacked a comprehensive multi-element geochemical dataset, to assess areas of interest for follow-up drilling and expand the prospect portfolio.

More from AUV: Auravelle cleared for next round of Nuckulla Hill gold drilling

Next steps

AUV is currently awaiting results from first pass aircore drilling at its Crown project in WA and assays from its second drill program in South Australia.

Assays from the soil sampling are also expected in December 2025 with Muir expecting it to provide new insights into previously unexplored areas within the gold-fertile Yarlbrinda Shear Zone at both Nuckulla Hill and Tunkillia North.

This is also expected to add new drill targets for testing in 2026 and beyond.

The company is planning to carry out follow-up drilling at Sheoak and other prospects at Nuckulla Hill in November 2025 and will carry out a first pass site visit to the new Skye gold project in South Australia in Q1 2026 to assess 2026 drill targets.

Follow-up exploration and drilling will also be carried out at the Nuckulla Hill and Tunkillia North projects in 2026.

This article was developed in collaboration with Auravelle Metals, 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.