Kalamazoo Resources has jagged eye-popping gold hits of up to 74 grams per tonne in 17 rock-chip samples from mine waste dumps at the Goldie North prospect within its Mt Piper project in Central Victoria.
The results from the company’s latest round of sampling followed up reported assays from the project’s previous owner, Torrens Mining, which identified the grade potential of the Goldie North prospect. Torrens’ best rock-chip assays included 31.1g/t gold and 30.4g/t gold.
Three of Kalamazoo’s new samples returned respective assays of 74g/t gold, 72g/t including visible gold and 42g/t gold. Another eight samples yielded results of between 8.4g/t and 16.8g/t, with all but one exceeding 10g/t. The average grade of all 17 samples is 17.2g/t gold and the company says associated multi-element assay data is still pending.
Light detection and radar (LiDAR) imagery and ground inspections confirmed a host of small and shallow exploratory historical diggings and related mullock dumps in the immediate area surrounding the Goldie North prospect, many of which are located on interpreted or mappable structures. But there are no known records of any historical drilling or gold production from the prospect.
The Mt Piper project is centred about 75km north of Melbourne and comprises multiple exploration licences that are highly prospective for both high-grade reef gold and large-scale disseminated gold-antimony deposits. They include Agnico Eagle’s world-class Fosterville gold-antimony mine, about 40km to the north-west of the central Mt Piper project licence.
Kalamazoo says most of the ground within the overall project group has not been exhaustively explored or tested by modern methods, although soil sampling was undertaken by Torrens in selected areas of interest.
The Goldie North prospect lies on the southern extensions of the renowned Heathcote-Mt William and Costerfield structural trends that run from Nagambie Resources’ Redcastle joint venture, a historic gold-antimony mining area discovered in 1859 that is about 50km to the north, through to Mandalay Resources’ high-grade Costerfield gold-antimony mine and then to the south-east corner of Mt Piper.
The gold-mineralised samples consist of micro-fractured quartz veins, where the company says fine-grained visible gold is closely associated with micro-fractures in one of the high-grade samples. It says that, subject to further investigations, the high-grade sample locations appear to coincide with the alignment of historical mine workings related to interpreted structural trends. While Southern Cross Gold’s nearby Sunday Creek project lies about 20km east of the Heathcote trend, it recently revealed significant drilling gold-antimony intersections including 119.2m at 3.2g/t and 0.4 per cent antimony, or 3.9g/t gold equivalent. It indicates that gold-antimony potential persists well south of Kalamazoo’s ground.
Management says its immediate project pathway will involve follow-up investigations at Goldie North, including more field mapping and rock-chip sampling, grid-based soil sampling, 3D structural modelling and interpretation of gold-mineralised structures. It will then be followed by further exploration permit applications, community engagement and preparations for initial drilling.
Kalamazoo has a portfolio of high-quality gold and lithium projects in Victoria and in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The company is exploring its 100 per cent-owned Castlemaine Goldfield, where historical production was in excess of 5.6 million ounces of gold, and south of the Maldon Goldfield that has unearthed about 2 million ounces.
The company recently raised $1.5 million through a strongly-supported placement to corporate, institutional and sophisticated investors and now sits on a cash balance of about $2.5 million. The funds will be used to accelerate ongoing exploration across the company’s portfolio.
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