White Cliff Minerals has completed a maiden 74 hole 4,440m RC drilling campaign at Reedy South in WA. Drilling targeted large gold soil geochemical anomalies at the contact zone between mafic rocks and banded iron formations at the Cracker Jack and McCaskill Hill prospects. The anomalous zone is thought to be associated with the prospective Burnakura shear zone.
White Cliff Technical Director Ed Mead said: “The Company’s maiden RC drilling programs at Cracker Jack and McCaskill Hill were completed successfully and on-time. We look forward to the assay results for this program.”
Three metre composite samples have been sent for analysis with results expected by late March.
White Cliff said the McCaskill Hill, Cracker Jack and Pegasus prospects form part of the highly prospective Meekatharra-Cue goldfields and its ground includes 5.5km of strike potential and 272 square kilometres within the prospective Meekatharra-Wydgee greenstone belt.
Close spaced soil geochemical sampling at Cracker Jack and McCaskill Hill showed gold anomalies tend to be on the margins of the stronger magnetic responses caused by the banded iron formations. The company said this is consistent with the concept that mineralisation is along the contact of the banded iron formations and surrounding mafic rocks.
At Cracker Jack the RC drilling targeted 650m of strike length where gold anomalism occurred along the eastern margin of the banded iron formation. There are two parallel banded iron formations and other contact zones remain undrilled.
White Cliff’s drilling campaign is also following up on the results from historical RAB drilling completed by Gold Mines of Australia in a program of 41 holes for 777m with a maximum depth of 20m or blade refusal. The best result from the prior RAB drilling was 9m @ 1.54g/t from 8m ending in mineralisation on the contact of the banded iron formation.
The McCaskill Hill drilling targeted quartz veining within the contact zone between the banded iron formation and the mafic and ultramafic rock units where strong soil gold anomalies occurred. Drilling also followed up results from historical exploration by Gold Mines of Australia near the southern limits of the banded iron formations.
The Reedy South project comprises one mining lease covering the historic underground Pegasus and King Cole mine workings, a granted exploration and prospecting license and four exploration license applications located around 80km south of Meekatharra.
White Cliff aims to generate several mineable deposits at its Reedy South project with a view to developing a stand-alone gold project. Current JORC resources at the project stand at 779,000 tonnes at 1.7 g/t gold for 42,400 ounces of gold.
The company compares the mineralisation style to the Triton-South Emu gold mine to the immediate north and it believes there is considerable scope to substantially grow the resource base at Reedy South.
White Cliff Minerals is starting to get to the pointy end of exploration at Reedy South with the RC drilling of key prospects. Results just might create a flurry of new exploration activity and more gold resources to add to the pile.
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By Matt Birney
