Initial assays from gold and nickel explorer Metal Hawk have come up trumps, with results from five diamond drilling holes from its Commodore prospect at the Berehaven project in WA’s goldfields returning gold hits, its best zone grading 38.5 grams per tonne. Nickel was also discovered with the company saying the result demonstrates a link with both the gold and nickel sulphide zones announced in February.
The initial results come from a combined 31-hole RC and diamond drilling program and returned significant gold intercepts including 2.5m reporting 7.4 grams per tonne gold from 255.4m, 5.9m yielding 6.7 grams per tonne from 244.4m and 1.4m going 4.1 grams per tonne from 223.1m.
Metal Hawk drilled nine diamond holes in total including diamond tails on three previously drilled nickel RC holes and 3900m of additional RC holes.
Nickel hits included 2.57m at 2.79 per cent from 212.65m and 3.2m going 2.4 per cent. The company says the unearthed nickel sulphides ranged from heavily disseminated to matrix-style mineralisation with predominantly transitional sulphides violarite-pyrite.
The majority of the drilling has been bedrock-testing the strike-extensive Commodore ultramafic unit as part of its systematic nickel sulphide exploration program at Berehaven.
Three of the RC holes drilled were also designed to test the projected up-dip position of the Commodore gold mineralisation. The company believes the results show a flatter-than-expected dip of gold mineralisation, meaning it is likely the RC holes were not drilled deep enough to test the gold zone. Follow-up drilling will be planned after the review of the final assays.
Metal Hawk is focusing on steadily exploring along the productive stratigraphy with RC campaigns, utilising recent air core geochemistry and geophysics to home in on new zones of nickel sulphide mineralisation.
Metal Hawk Managing Director, Will Belbin said: “We have successfully completed the first campaign of diamond drilling designed to evaluate the high-grade gold zone at Commodore and have recorded significant gold results in all diamond holes assayed so far. We look forward to the receipt of remaining assays over the next four to six weeks.”
Belbin says systematic nickel sulphide exploration at Berehaven, 20km south-east of Kalgoorlie, is continuing with more RC drilling in the pipeline.
Metal Hawk also has interests in two large gold projects in the Albany-Fraser Orogen. The company is targeting high-grade gold at the Viking Gold project east of Norseman in partnership with Falcon Metals. The Fraser South project is about 80km south of the Nova-Bollinger mine where it is free-carried by Western Areas up to final investment decision.
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By Matt Birney
