ASX-listed explorer, Victory Mines, has fired up the drill bit at its joint-ventured historic Coogee gold project about 55km south-east of Kalgoorlie as it looks to tease out high-grade extensions with the aim of building on the resource left by its JV partner more than six years ago.
The Perth-based company is planning an RC drilling program comprising 30 holes totalling 4,000m at its recently acquired Coogee project. The program is designed to test the down-plunge extensions of a number of the high-grade gold shoots across the entire 600m strike length of the Coogee pit mineralised trend as well as below the previously mined open pit.
Victory says most of the holes will range in depth from 50m to 150m, with selected deeper holes down to 220m. Gold mineralisation at Coogee is hosted within a shallow lode/shear zone, with high-grade zones occurring as south-east plunging shoots.
Historical drilling, some of which was undertaken by Victory’s current Coogee JV partner, WA gold miner Ramelius Resources, returned some bonanza gold assays from several shoots within the 600m Coogee pit corridor.
Notable intersections from that drilling work were 2m going 28.7 grams per tonne gold from 63m, 3m at 21.03 g/t from 104m, 6m at 16.80 g/t from 36m, 2m at 14.9 g/t from 74m and 5m at 11.13 g/t from 82m.
Eight years ago, Ramelius came up with an indicated and inferred mineral resource estimate for the Coogee deposit of 224,000 tonnes grading 4.1 g/t gold. It went on to define ore reserves of 109,000 tonnes at 5.1 g/t for 18,000 ounces of contained gold.
Open-pit mining operations at Coogee subsequently kicked off in August 2013 and were wound up in February 2014, with 35 per cent more tonnes extracted than the ore reserves estimate. Coogee ore was treated at Ramelius’ former Burbanks processing plant, 8km south of Coolgardie and 112km from the project area.
The company reported total Coogee gold production of about 20,400oz from the 152,800 dry tonnes of open-pit ore that was milled at an average plant head grade of 4.7 g/t gold and metallurgical recovery of 96.4 per cent.
Ramelius released an inferred and indicated mineral resource for Coogee of 96,000t at 3.4 g/t for 10,600oz of contained gold in September last year before Victory became involved in August this year.
Under the terms of the JV with Ramelius, Victory is required to sink $2.1 million into exploration at Coogee to earn an 80 per cent interest in the project. In that regard, Victory has hit the ground running having already clocked up exploration expenditure of $550,000.
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