Shallow gold lights up London Victoria as Adavale drills into growth potential

• Adavale’s maiden drilling hits gold immediately below existing pit floor
• High-grade intersections up to 14.6g/t extend mineralisation 1.4km
• Second phase drilling planned to target substantial resource growth

Special Report: Adavale Resources’ maiden drill program has highlighted the gold production potential of its London Victoria mine in NSW’s highly prospective Lachlan Fold Belt after returning shallow gold intersections.

The first holes in the program returned gold hits immediately below the open pit floor as well as down dip and along strike to the south.

Notable intersections include:

• 10m grading 1.95g/t Au from 149m including 1m at 8.3g/t (ALRC001);
• 3m at 6.64g/t Au from 10m including 1m at 14.6g/t (ALRC011); and
• 12m at 1.48g/t Au from 38m (ALRC004).

Adavale Resources (ASX:ADD) has extended mineralisation to a strike length of more than 1.4km, well beyond the previously mined lodes and outside the current resource area.

This highlights the significant potential for resource expansion.

“The initial assay results from the maiden drilling program have reinforced the conviction Adavale has a potential producing asset in the London Victoria gold mine,” executive chairman Allan Ritchie said.

“High-grade mineralisation has been confirmed both within and outside of the existing JORC mineral resource envelope which will be utilised to further expand upon the size and confidence of the resource.

“Analysis of the downhole logs has highlighted a relationship between magnetic susceptibility and gold mineralisation.

“Using this relationship Adavale can detect the demagnetised volcanics as a proxy for mineralisation utilising well established geophysical methods. This makes for more efficient drill targeting in future drilling campaigns.”

Parkes project and London Victoria mine

The London Victoria gold mine has a resource of 3.14Mt grading 1.06g/t, or 107,000oz contained gold, which makes up the bulk of the 115,000oz resource at the broader Parkes gold-copper project.

This is contained within a shallow, conceptual open pit, which extends no more than 100m below the existing pit floor.

Parkes lies at the intersection of the Macquarie Arc Volcanics, and the Lachlan Transverse Zone, which is a significant geological corridor that offers structurally-controlled gold and porphyry copper-gold mineralisation.

The geology in this area is similar to that of neighbouring world-class assets, such as the Northparkes and Cadia-Ridgeway mines.

Assays from the first 11 holes of the drilling, which was designed to cover multiple targets along the full 1.5km north-south strike of the open pit, have confirmed that gold mineralisation is present at shallow depths both below and along strike from the JORC resource.

Observations within the pit during the drilling campaign suggest that the gross architecture of the deposit is a doubly plunging fold and the mineralisation plunges to the north and south.

This interpretation will be followed up with specialist structural geology consultants Model Earth to confirm and refine this model in order to better target high-grade gold mineralisation at the London Victoria mine.

More to come

Assays are pending for a further three holes with the company’s visual inspecting indicating that mineralisation has been intersected.

ADD is currently preparing to carry out a magnetic survey to provide detailed definition of magnetic lows associated with the gold bearing zone in the volcanics.

It is also planning a second phase of drilling to test extensions beneath the existing pits and along strike.

This will target substantial resource growth beyond the current footprint.

This article was developed in collaboration with Adavale Resources, 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.