Mt Malcom Mines is close to defining a maiden resource for Golden Crown. Pic via Getty Images
Mining
Special Report: Closed-spaced shallow reverse circulation drilling aimed at converting the exploration target at Mt Malcolm Mines’ Golden Crown prospect into a maiden resource has returned visible gold in numerous intersections.
The visible gold shouldn’t be all too surprising given that Golden Crown is a historical producer, once yielding some 1,720oz gold at a grade of 29g/t from several stopes and shafts.
Despite this, Golden Crown has only seen minimal exploration since production ceased at the project in the mineral-rich Leonora region. This including limited drilling that returned up to 4m @ 10.4g/t gold from 32m.
Working off the historical production and drilling, Mt Malcolm Mines (ASX:M2M) was able to sketch out an exploration target of up to 150,000t @ 15g/t gold for the prospect.
M2M has now completed a 60-hole drill program totalling 2,778m to test a 130m wide mineralisation corridor that encompasses the historical Golden Crown workings, which are characterised by shallow plunging quartz vein shoots, with drilling carried out on a nominal 8m x 12m spaced grid.
It included several holes drilled to evaluate a series of quartz veins and historical shallow workings some 80m further north along strike.
Notably, visible gold was observed in 10 separate intervals with individual gold grains up to 2mm wide during logging of the RC chips.
Assays from this drill program are expected about 4-5 weeks from delivery of the samples to the laboratory.
These will allow M2M to calculate a maiden resource for Golden Crown.
Meanwhile, the original vendor, which retains surface rights to alluvial/eluvial gold, has informed the company of recent scraping, detecting and dry blowing activities at the Emu Egg prospect.
The vendor noted that 1.77kg (56.9oz) of alluvial/eluvial gold had been recovered from ~4,335t of surface material mined in a 0.65 hectare area, within a significant +100ppb gold soil anomaly amongst historical workings and surrounds.
Notably, these activities were near historical hole BRRB056 that returned a 9m intersection @ 2.17g/t gold.
Emu Egg consists of two distinct, structurally independent elongate parallel magnetic highs that coincide with extensive +20ppb gold anomalies and numerous significant downhole drill intersections with anomalous gold.
However, while the alluvial gold recovery provides further evidence of the prospect’s gold prospectivity, the historical drilling is considered inadequate for effective testing of the bedrock.
As such, M2M plans to carry out follow-up drilling to confirm the mineralisation and test the magnetic high extensions.
Over at the Lake Johnston prospect close to the giant Earl Grey deposit, sampling of historical drill chips containing pegmatites returned low-order lithium and rare earth assay results from the small portion of the tenure that was reviewed.
Based on regional magnetic imagery, this area borders on a fractionated granitic dome/greenstone contact and several “rafts of greenstone” that have not been tested by sampling or drilling.
M2M plans to explore for lithium and REE mineralisation by conducting several staged exploration programs, including geological mapping, rock chip sampling and soil geochemical sampling over areas with potential to host lithium mineralisation.
It will then carry out RC drilling over areas where structurally controlled pegmatite clusters and positive soil geochemistry results are identified.
This article was developed in collaboration with Mt Malcolm Mines, 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.
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