Venus Metals has lodged four new tenement applications about 50 kilometres northwest of Menzies in Western Australia and it has identified some interesting gold and nickel targets by conducting a historical data review at the project. The project is nestled on the boundary between the revered Youanmi and Kalgoorlie Terranes in the central section of the Yilgarn Craton.
Venus says that the Snake Hill prospect is a high priority target that looks to be just about drill ready. It has scatterings of artisanal workings and a historical rock chip sample that returning grades up to 5.1 grams per tonne gold. It also has a soil anomaly running 500 parts per billion gold which begs the question, where is the source ?
At Snake Hill, Venus said that a geological feature has been interpreted from aeromagnetic data that may be similar to the host rocks at the Bottle Creek gold mine that was operated by Norgold Limited between 1987 and 1988 with head grades ranging from 2.8g/t to 3.5g/t and average gold recoveries of 92% in a CIP circuit.
Bottle Creek is located on the northern end of the prolific Mt Ida Shear and the convergence of the well-known Zuleika Shear and is currently held by ASX-listed, Alt Resources who is looking to make the old mining centre into a standalone gold and silver play.
At the newly identified Snake Hill East target, Venus said there has been very little exploration and it looks to be in a structurally interesting position with the right rocks to potentially host gold mineralisation.
The company also said the new Henderson Bore prospect appears to host a north trending zone of anomalous gold in soil, which is also coincidentally located at a favourable geological contact.
There is also some other significant gold projects within the Mt Ida region such as Mt Ida and Davyhurst, where gold’s renewed interest is breathing new life into those projects.
Davyhurst hosts a mothballed 1.2 million tonne per annum processing plant where ASX-listed Ora Banda Mining is sitting on about 141,000 ounces of gold grading 13.8 grams per tonne gold at Mt Ida. Ora Banda has a combined global mineral resource inventory of 21.0Mt grading 2.6g/t for 1.8M ounces.
Venus has also identified the Hill Top East and Emerald South 1 and Emerald South 2 targets that it says also have some interesting anomalies that any follow up exploration had not been able to clarify.
With the potential for St George Mining’s Mt Alexander-style or Jimberlana Dyke-style mineraliation in the Henderson project area, Venus has also kept an eye out for nickel indicators and said that the Blue Well prospect has been pegged as a new target.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact : matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
