Aurum Resources has launched its maiden 74-hole, 3500m air-core drilling campaign at its Ryans Find gold project, north-east of Koolyanobbing, to follow up on some alluring gold and base metals soil anomalies.
The holes will be oriented in multiple transects perpendicular to the strike of a prospective north/north-westerly-trending greenstone belt, with the aim of netting some trophy catches along a strike length of some 12km. The company’s exploration licences contain more than 50km of strike length across an underexplored portion of the greenstone belt.
The drilling within what management describes as “striking greenstones” is expected to take 2 to 3 weeks, with assays of 4m composite samples for gold and 1m composites for base metals at weathered basement intersections to follow.
Ryans Find was initially explored for nickel by WMC Resources in the 1970s, but has since seen little modern exploration activity. A later phase of exploration by Aldoro Resources consisted of a first-pass geochemical survey aimed at identifying nickel-cobalt anomalies, which unwittingly unveiled the anomalous gold trends that have formed the basis for the current drilling program.
The project is along strike and south-east from the mothballed Mt Dimer Tipan Pit that produced some 8500 ounces of gold grading 3.44 grams per tonne in the 1990s. A JORC-compliant resource of nearly 50,000 ounces of gold and about 90,000 ounces of silver has since been defined at Mt Dimer by its current owner, ASX-listed Everest Metals Corporation.
Aurum’s ground surrounds the lease and is on the structural trend where the Mt Dimer resource remains open to the south and down dip.
The company’s other flagship operation is the Penny South gold project in the Youanmi gold district. A reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program it conducted last year on two different structural targets returned positive gold assays of up to 4m at 0.6g/t from 152m in basalt.
Management says the results have defined a broad zone of low-grade mineralisation, with pockets of higher grade. In March this year, Aurum revealed it had completed a 5.2-square-kilometre ground induced-polarisation (IP) gradient array survey at Penny South that targeted nickel-cobalt mineralisation considered to be hosted within ultramafic schists. The final analysis is pending.
Meanwhile, market-watchers will be focussed on Aurum’s maiden AC drilling campaign at Ryans Find to see if the drillbit can churn up some good shows of gold and base metals.
The company also revealed today that it had received firm commitments to raise $715,000 in a placement it says has been strongly supported by its major shareholders.
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By Gary Kjellgren
