Venus Metals Corporation has jumped back into drilling at Youanmi, wasting no time following up on a swag of emerging prospects surrounding the mothballed historic gold operation. The company has kicked off a reverse circulation drilling campaign across the Youanmi North, Taylors Reef and Sovereign prospects as it zeroes in on a new batch of discoveries across the fertile gold terrane at Youanmi.
Venus is looking to follow up on historical soil sampling and drilling at the Youanmi North prospect in particular that is located around 7km north-east of the mine site along the interpreted extensions of the gold-bearing Youanmi Shear.
Previous exploration at Youanmi North has helped to build a solid set of targeting criteria across the prospect area with surface rock chips yielding results of up to nearly an ounce per tonne gold. In addition, shallow rotary air blast drilling also returned 8m at 1.31 g/t gold from 48m.
The prospect extends along an auriferous granite-greenstone contact, the same environment that hosts the impressive Grace discovery to the southwest, with multiple fences of RC drilling having been designed to test the target along more than 800m of strike.
The other prospect areas set to receive Venus’ attention are the Sovereign and Taylor’s Reef targets, located around 20km south-west of the old Youanmi mine. These two prospects appear to form part of a larger gold-bearing system, just 5km north of the revered high-grade Penny West Deeps gold discovery.
Recent drilling at Taylors reef has returned a bevy of high-grade gold intercepts including 3m at 19.58 g/t gold with 1m at 55.81 g/t gold from 21m and 3m at 14.30 g/t gold with 1m at 19.86 g/t gold from 73m downhole. This latest round of RC drilling is designed to test the size of the potential ore system at Taylors, both along strike and at depth.
Exploration at the Sovereign prospect, 1.5km east of Taylors reef, will test the depth extents of the discovery and the newly interpreted extensions to the mineralisation, northeast of the discovery. Previous drilling at Sovereign has returned a wealth of alluring results including 10m at 3.64 g/t gold, with 2m at 10.64 g/t gold from 79m and 8m at 5.03 g/t gold, with 2m at 15.83 g/t gold, from 160m.
Venus’ increasing tempo of drilling activity across the Youanmi region speaks to the rich-endowment of this resurgent gold mining terrane. The project is located 480km north of Perth in the Midwest region of Western Australia with the company’s tenure covering more than 350 square kilometres of the greenstone belt.
The Youanmi project area is the subject of various joint venture agreements with partner, Rox Resources. Rox is now responsible for managing the JV’s exploration and development in the region.
The Youanmi region that has produced over 667,000 ounces of gold has a history of mining and exploration that dates back over a century. Exploration across the goldfield’s greenstone belt has been revitalised in recent times by the high-grade discoveries at Penny West Deeps south of the JV’s tenure and the Grace prospect, which Rox discovered next to the Youanmi mill in late 2019.
With the Venus-Rox JV having already notched more than 1 million ounces in gold resources at Youanmi, Venus is looking to build on this impressive number and continue its run of good form as it jumps back into drilling at its priority targets in this gold-bearing terrane.
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By Matt Birney
