Just as Stockhead ‘Garimpeiro’ columnist Barry FitzGerald flagged before the news landed, Rumble Resources (ASX:RTR) has now revealed the “significant” high-grade gold find made by its much bigger partner Independence Group (ASX:IGO).

Rumble told investors this morning that high-grade gold mineralisation had been intersected within a paleo-drainage and into basement rocks at the Themis prospect, part of the larger Thunderstorm project in the prospective Fraser Range region of Western Australia.

It’s exactly as Fitzy predicted – read all about it here.

Drilling by Independence at the Themis prospect delivered hits of 25m at 2.42 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 42m, including 5m at 10.85g/t from 49m.

Some 13km further along, at the Pion prospect, Independence struck 4m at 3.8g/t from 86m and 4m at 0.34g/t from 106m.

Anything above 5g/t is generally considered high-grade, though at the current strong gold price even 2g/t can be very profitable for Aussie miners.

Investors initially liked the news, pushing Rumble’s shares up 7.7 per cent to an intra-day peak of 7c on Monday morning. However, shares have since fallen back nearly 11 per cent to 5.8c.

Thunderstorm is a prospect that has sparked interest in the past because of the nearby presence of a big gold-in-soil anomaly.

Previous exploration by others failed to find the source of the anomaly, said to be bigger than the anomaly that led to the 2005 discovery of the multi-million oz Tropicana gold deposit, now one of Australia’s biggest gold mines and owned 70 per by AngloGold Ashanti (ASX:AGG) and 30 per cent by Independence.

Coincidentally, Rumble’s technical director, Brett Keillor, is the same man that served as chief geologist at Independence at the time of the Tropicana gold discovery.

Rumble said it considered the Themis prospect gold mineralisation as the “most significant gold intercept in recent years in the Fraser Range outside of the Tropicana gold system”.

The company noted that drilling by Independence had outlined numerous intercepts of over 100 parts per billion on other paleo-drainages that feed into the main system.

Independence has now earned a 70 per cent stake in the Thunderstorm project – leaving Rumble free-carried through to the completion of a pre-feasibility study.

Independence will soon start infill drilling to test the high-grade gold mineralisation.

Stockhead is seeking comment from Rumble.

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