Kalgoorlie Gold Mining (ASX: KAL) is all cashed up and raring to rip into a new air-core (AC) drilling program to follow up shallow gold targets identified in its first probing of the Wessex target within its Pinjin project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region.
The company has designed 4500m of AC drilling in a bid to further assess results from Wessex just three months ago that included a hit of 28m at 1.27 grams per tonne gold from just 36m. The intercept included 8m at 1.9g/t and another 8m going 2.15g/t, while a second hole came up with 12m at 1.7g/t gold including 4m running 3.07g/t from 56m.
The company describes the results from its latest program as “exceptional” for shallow AC drilling and says it indicates that the mineralisation could be part of a broader gold system related to Hawthorn Resources’ Anglo-Saxon open-pit mine that lies just 1km north-east of the Wessex drilling. The Wessex results also suggest that a target could exist in untested zones both north and south of the present drilling limits and also down-dip to the east towards Anglo-Saxon.
The new round of drilling, which KalGold says will begin today, is seeking to resolve the existence and nature of any relationship between the Wessex and Anglo-Saxon mineralised zones. If the new AC campaign detects any sniffs of gold pointing to potentially deeper targets, especially in the expected down-dip extensions towards Anglo-Saxon, they could justify deploying a reverse-circulation (RC) rig for its greater reach and penetration into any fresh rock targets.
At the end of the previous financial quarter, KalGold undertook a successful placement for $2.3 million, including a commitment from directors to tip $50,000 into the kitty. Additionally, it opened a share purchase plan last week in a bid to raise another $500,000, which is scheduled to close on August 30.
The key objective of the fundraising was to accelerate the company’s drilling programs and to meet its farm-in commitments at Pinjin.
KalGold plans to employ the balance of about 1500m of AC drilling to test other targets around its Kirgella Gift and Providence deposits, about 13km south of Wessex. The company had focussed previous work on its Kirgella Gift and Providence prospects, two historic shows which also lie about 21km north along the same strike trend from Ramelius Resources’ 1.04 million-ounce Rebecca gold project.
Less than a month ago, management revealed a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate for Kirgella Gift and Providence of 2.34 million tonnes at an average gold grade of 1g/t for 76,400 ounces from just 3m depth. It noted that mineralisation remains open at depth and along strike between the two sets of historic workings and that it saw strong potential for resource growth and upgrade if untested and unclassified blocks outside the limits of the current resource model were drilled.
Accordingly, KalGold is now planning several holes to test the shear zone at Kirgella Gift and will also drill to test gold anomalism picked up in previous AC and rotary air-blast (RAB) drilling at Providence and for any faulted structural repeats of its mineralisation.
The Wessex, Kirgella Gift and Providence prospects and Ramelius’ Rebecca resource are centred about 140km north-east of Kalgoorlie and all lie on the highly-prospective and richly gold-endowed Laverton Tectonic Zone, which is a major crustal-scale structure that hosts some of WA’s biggest gold mines including Granny Smith-Wallaby, Sunrise Dam, Red October, Linden Gold, Deep South, Anglo-Saxon and Rebecca.
Follow-on work is planned for the next two months and will include testing of other targets at Pinjin, with results expected in October/November.
Further flow-on work will be planned, subject to results of the previous campaigns, and is seen as likely to include RC drilling at Wessex, Kirgella Gift and Providence to progressively improve management’s understanding of the prospects, with results expected early next year.
Most importantly, for now, is that KalGold’s rig should be generating samples imminently from its first holes, so within two to three weeks, the company can reasonably expect to reveal some news from the laboratory.
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