Gold-focused Aurumin is gearing up for its inaugural drilling program at the company’s recently-acquired Central Sandstone gold project 130km west of Leinster in Western Australia.
The campaign will feature a mix of RC and diamond drilling and is expected to start this month following the end of the company’s ongoing lithium hunt at its Mt Palmer project, about 350km to the south.
The exploration has two overarching objectives, with the first focus to beef up the larger 500,000 gold ounce Two Mile Hill Deeps underground resource to a higher-grade in addition to testing for depth extensions.
Secondly, 250m to the south a further volley of holes will test the down plunge position of the high-grade core of the Shillington-Two Mile Hill banded iron formation that currently hosts an open pit resource of 86,500 ounces of gold.
Aurumin Managing Director, Brad Valiukas said: “We see the Two Mile Hill Deeps resource as a key part of the project going forward, with the scale to potentially underpin future production. This extra drilling could prove important in better understanding the deposit’s potential.”
Aurumin’s total gold resource at Sandstone comes in at a solid 784,300 ounces grading 1.1 g/t gold and is made up of 11 open pit deposits and two underground deposits.
Interestingly the bulk of that gold – 500,000 ounces – comes from the underground deposits within the Two Mile Hill tonalite and to a lesser extent the hosting banded iron formation. Specifically, the two underground deposits have been defined from between 160m and 500m below the surface.
The company says most of the drilling at Two Mile Hill to date has focused on the top 250m, where an open pit resource of 71,000 ounces of gold has been defined.
Although the limited deeper drilling is widely spaced, management says it has successfully identified high-grade intercepts in the tonalite, often with larger moderate grade intersections exceeding 2 grams per tonne gold to a depth of 650m below the surface. Importantly the deposit is considered open below this depth.
The first part of the program aims to increase the data density in the area of sparser drilling between 250m and 500m below the surface, with five holes for about 3000m planned.
The exploration will earn Aurumin a greater understanding of the mineralisation with the overarching goal being to determine ore shoot controls that demonstrate the broad 2 g/t gold intersections can be linked into continuous zones.
The work aims to define a higher-grade resource that can be progressed towards production.
The focus of the diamond program is on the tonalite body however mineralisation is also expected in the mafic and banded iron formation units hosting the Two Mile Hill tonalite.
The RC program at the Shillington-Two Mile Hill banded iron formation deposit will target the down plunge position of the Shillington Open Pit Resource of 86,500 ounces grading 1.2 g/t gold.
Interestingly, from the open pit the banded iron formation is interpreted to plunge down to the Two Mile Hill tonalite and in this area boasts a grade of 3.1 g/t gold and as such is an attractive target in Aurumin’s eyes.
The goal of the work along the banded iron formation is to bolster its underground resources to complement the primary tonalite hosted system.
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