Copper mineralisation visible in diamond core at Godolphin Resources’ Goodrich prospect looked too good for the company to resist, so it extended respective drilling depths by 35m and 32m at its two-hole program in NSW.
The company says its resulting core will now be sampled and sent to the laboratory, with assays due back towards the end of this quarter.
Godolphin planned to drill down to 300m in its first hole in the program, but it was ultimately taken down an extra 35m. It says the core contains 90m of observed copper in chalcopyrite and bornite, in addition to lesser molybdenum mineralisation from 150m in a hydrothermally-altered feldspar porphyry-style rock. Copper mineralisation was seen to continue to the end of the hole.
The second hole had a planned depth of 250m, but was extended to 282m due to observed copper and molybdenum mineralisation from 30m to 145m and encouraging hydrothermal alteration and patchy copper mineralisation to the end of the hole.
As a geologist it is always thrilling to see minerals of economic value in our drill cores, after many hours of evaluating the data and designing drill holes to test the targets of interest. The drill program went very smoothly. Our geologists are currently taking additional geological measurements, collecting structural data and logging the rock types and minerals of the drill core in detail. Once completed, the samples of core will be cut and delivered to the laboratory for analysis. Goodrich is an exciting prospect and we are very keen to progress our copper projects in light of the predicted outlook for global copper demand in support of the transition towards green technologies. Godolphin Resources managing director Jeneta Owens.
The company says the core will now be logged in detail at its core facility in Orange, before samples are sent to the lab for assay.
Godolphin’s tenements at its 100 per cent-owned Goodrich-Yeoval copper-gold project, where the Goodrich prospect is located, cover about 3200 square kilometres of ground on the highly-prospective Lachlan Transverse Zone.
The zone is one of the key structures which controlled the formation of copper and gold deposits within the wider Lachlan Fold Belt and is regarded as a premier bulk-tonnage gold and copper province in Australia. The fold belt is huge and stretches along an axis that almost touches Bourke in the north-west and extends past Canberra in the south-east.
The company’s current exploration program follows surface geological mapping, which found an undrilled area of outcropping visible secondary copper mineralisation, in addition to strong pervasive and vein-related epidote-chlorite-albite-sericite alteration.
Management says recent drilling at Goodrich tested a prime structural target typical of Lachlan Fold Belt copper-gold mineralisation. Rock-chip sampling at Goodrich earlier this year gave a teaser, with results coming back as high as 1.54 per cent copper, 0.15 grams per tonne gold, 7.67g/t silver, 3320 parts per million molybdenum and 0.23 per cent lead … just for some flavour.
The previous owner of the Yeoval tenement, Ardea Resources, published a 2019 mineral resource estimate of 12.8 million tonnes at 0.38 per cent copper, 0.14g/t gold, 2.2g/t silver and 120ppm molybdenum.
With assays pending for Godolphin’s latest two Goodrich diamond holes, the market will no doubt be watching this space intently.
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