Reconnaissance work over Victory Mines’ Bonaparte project in WA is already paying dividends, with both rock chipping and resampling of historic drilling returning high-grade copper samples including outcropping mineralisation which grades up to a bumper 25.9 per cent copper and 13.7 g/t silver. Victory’s back-to-basics approach has outlined an extensive copper anomalism with drilling scheduled to kick off in the coming months.
Victory’s Bonaparte project is located in northern Western Australia’s Kimberley region and comprises of a single granted exploration license located around 50km east of the port at Wyndham. The project covers an area of around 290 square kilometres and includes a sequence of copper-bearing sediments that host the renown “Redbank” copper prospects. The project also lies a mere 30km west of Pacifico Minerals’ rapidly developing Sorby Hills Lead-Silver deposit.
The first pass program has proved to be a successful initial foray into the project for Victory.
Its initial work program that was designed to narrow on potential drill targets included geological mapping, the collection of rock chip samples, locating old drill holes, resampling historic drill core and meetings with local native title groups. The program lays the foundation for the commencement of drilling later in the year, with the WA Mines Department having previously approved the upcoming program.
Victory Mines Director, Alec Pismiris said:
“The recent fieldwork at Bonaparte has yielded important new information about the Company’s exciting base metals project. We look forward now to drilling which is now necessary to confirm the potential mineralisation extensions”
The company’s geological mapping across selected targets at Bonaparte has proven particularly telling with Victory’s geologists identifying copper, lead and zinc mineralisation over a far more extensive area than was initially expected. Rock chips taken in close proximity to a number of geophysical targets also returned outstanding grades of more than 15 per cent copper and a further sample weighing in at impressive 18.8 per cent copper and 55 g/t silver.
Victory has also put considerable resources into locating the old drill hole locations and drill core which has proven a veritable treasure trove of technical and geochemical information. Resampling of key intercepts from the Redbank prospects returned assays of 3.1m at 3.99 per cent copper with 80.8 g/t silver including 1.3m at 8.4 per cent copper with an impressive 181 g/t silver from 46.1m.
Other solid numbers were 6.1m at 3.13 per cent copper with 6.7 g/t silver from only 3m and 12.2 metres at 2.36 per cent copper from 10.6m.
The company’s modelling of the integrated geophysical data including gravity and electromagnetics, mapping surface anomalisms and near-surface copper intercepts has outlined the Redbank base metals trend over more than 2.8km of strike.
Victory’s back-to-basics approach at Bonaparte is building a burgeoning copper target with extensive copper anomalisms and high-grade samples from historic drilling that look like they are begging to feel the drill bit. With the copper price reaching for a 5-year high trading at more than US$6,700 a tonne, Victory is well positioned as it looks towards drilling at Bonaparte in the coming months.
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By Matt Birney
