Marmota (ASX: MEU) will lean on its experience in finding gold to explore the potential for a new South Australian province featuring the yellow metal after recording positive results in a maiden drill campaign at its Goolagong target.
Management says the results from Goolagong bear similarities to gold mineralisation at the nearby Aurora Tank, Campfire Bore, Golf Bore and Challenger prospects that form part of the company’s greater Gawler Craton project.
The reconnaissance air-core (AC) drill campaign was designed to test a north-east-striking gold-in-calcrete anomaly at a prospect previously untouched by a drill bit. Assays returned promising results, with a 2m hit grading 0.64 grams per tonne gold from 36m including 1m at 0.53g/t from 36m in addition to 1m going 0.75g/t from 37m.
Importantly, grades increased to the end of the hole at 38m.
Goolagong already has all the attributes of being a potential new gold discovery, with gold grades increasing downhole.
Marmota chairman Dr Colin Rose
Aurora Tank is considered the company’s flagship deposit, with a raft of high-grade hits close to surface including multiple intersections grading more than 100g/t gold including highlights of 1m reading 217g/t from 118m.
Campfire Bore holds a resource of 2.78 million tonnes at 1.2g/t for 109,000 gold ounces, while Golf Bore contains 3.79 million tonnes going 1g/t for 119,000 gold ounces.
Goolagong already has all the attributes of being a potential new gold discovery, with gold grades increasing downhole, reproducible across 4m composites and 1m splits, and which only stopped due to hitting refusal with the recon AC rig. It also highlights the degree of luck in exploration: if the hole had been drilled 2m shorter, this could have been so easily missed.
Marmota chairman Dr Colin Rose
Goolagong is also just 20km north-west of the Challenger gold mine that has produced more than 1 million gold ounces and 35km south-west of Marmota’s Greenewood and Mainwood gold deposits that host 46,000 ounces and 12,000 ounces, respectively. The new prospect is 100 per cent-owned by the company, which also holds the gold rights to the adjoining tenement.
Further south, it also owns 100 per cent of the Western Gawler Craton project that contains two gold deposits – Typhoon with 16,000 ounces and Monsoon with 17,000 ounces.
The successful latest hit was part of a 17-hole AC program testing for gold mineralisation close to surface at an average depth of 33m. Management says all adjacent holes ended closer to surface due to refusal.
The company plans to bring in a bigger reverse-circulation (RC) rig to test its new gold discovery at depth, in addition to deeper drilling at the adjacent holes. The program is likely to work in conjunction with a large RC campaign being planned for the Campfire Bore target.
With the current gold price still sitting well above the $3500 per ounce mark, Marmota may have served a timely ace with its latest discovery at Goolagong as it looks to build on an already impressive string of tenements at its Gawler Craton project.
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