Kalamazoo Resources has kicked off an 1100m reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program at the Styx and Charon prospects within its Ashburton gold project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region to test for shallow oxide gold mineralisation.
At Styx, the company has designed two respective lines of four and five RC drillholes to test for the mineralisation associated with the shallow extents of a gently-dipping 20m-to-30m coarse sandstone unit that shows well-developed pyrite mineralisation in outcrop linked to subvertical faulting.
At Charon, two fences 80m apart, made up of two drillholes each, have been designed to test a steeply-dipping and deeply-weathered fault that hosts a soil gold geochemical anomaly. The prospect has not previously been drilled, so the program is designed to test both the anomalism associated with the fault, in addition to the thick prospective coarse conglomerate and sandstone units in the footwall of the fault.
The Styx and Charon prospects are about 6km south-east of the company’s Mt Olympus gold resource that is estimated at 12 million tonnes at 2 grams per tonne gold for 1.07 million ounces. It is associated with an area of anomalous soil geochemistry where thick widths of pyrite mineralisation outcrop in coarse “porous” sandstones, with rock-chip samples returning assays of more than 1g/t gold.
Kalamazoo has also received the results of a recent gradient array induced- polarisation (GAIP), in addition to the results of follow-up pole-dipole IP surveys at the Mt Olympus and West Olympus prospects, with five significant chargeability anomalies identified.
Four of the anomalies lie within the footprint of the Mt Olympus deposit and all of them correlate with gold mineralisation in surface rock chip samples. Drill planning is currently underway to test the most prospective anomalies.
The Mount Olympus Gold Mine is 60km south-east of the iron ore mining town of Paraburdoo. Five deposits were discovered in the area by Sipa Resources in 1996 and were progressively developed from 1998 to 2004 into five open pits – Mount Olympus, West Olympus, Zeus, Peake and Waugh.
The deposits produced 340,000 ounces of gold from 3.2 million tonnes of ore averaging 3.3g/t. The plant was sold in 2006 and the site was largely rehabilitated.
Estimated reserves as of 2003 were for 50,000 ounces of gold and resources amounted to 92,000 ounces of gold from mainly oxide and transitional material via pit cutbacks that graded about 2.4g/t. In 2011, Northern Star Resources, which owned the Paulsen gold mine in the region, bought the mine site from Sipa. By 2013, the project was on care and maintenance. The site comprises several small deep open pits scattered across rugged terrane stretching across 5km.
Mt Olympus now forms part of Kalamazoo’s 1.07-million-ounce Ashburton gold project it acquired after it was divested by Northern Star.
Kalamazoo revealed last year that tests on its Mt Olympus ore resulted in gold recoveries of up to 94 per cent and it has substantially de-risked the potential development of the Ashburton project through its initial metallurgical testwork. It has also identified several new prospective targets in the immediate vicinity, in addition to other new targets and prospects across its Ashburton project.
Drill design planning is underway in order to test the most prospective of the latest targets with the objective of increasing the Mt Olympus deposit estimates and to discover new sources of oxide and sulphide resources across the project tenements.
The company says its upcoming work will include field reconnaissance, geological mapping and interpretation, target modelling and ranking and the generation of new drill targets. It will also feature surface geochemical programs including soil and rock-chip sampling.
Kalamazoo translates as “a place where the water boils” in the context of turbulence on the bend of a river. Styx means both goddess and river of the underworld and Charon is the ferryman.
It leads one to wonder whether the company can get its mine boiling near the banks of one beautiful Pilbara tributary bearing the same name as its Ashburton project.
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