WA-focused explorer White Cliff Minerals has unveiled an untested 2.8km anomalous gold trend at McCaskill’s Hill along the southern end of the Burnakura Shear Zone in the Meekatharra-Cue goldfields. A maiden drilling campaign is in the works following successful soil sampling campaigns at McCaskill’s Hill and Cracker Jack, both part of the company’s Reedy South project.
Reedy South, south of Meekatharra, covers 272 square kilometres of tenure along the gold-rich Reedy Shear Zone that hosts high-grade mines such as Westgold Resources’ South Emu-Triton underground operation.
A maiden resource estimate for Reedy South released last October came in at 779,000 tonnes going 1.7 grams per tonne gold for 42,400 ounces. White Cliff sees significant scope to grow the resource along strike and at depth.
The newly identified 2.8km gold anomaly at McCaskill Hill is about 10km from Westgold’s mining operations. White Cliff says its 16 sq.km tenement may include a 5.5km section of the Meekatharra-Wydgee greenstone belt.
After airborne geophysics highlighted geological settings seen to be prospective for banded iron formation and shear-hosted gold mineralisation, White Cliff collected 229 samples at McCaskill’s Hill at 100m intervals along east-west lines 200m apart earlier this year.
It said a peak value of 130 parts per billion gold was returned from the newly identified anomaly. Results from the new soil sampling were combined with historical soil sampling data collected by Gold Mines of Australia in the 1990s. The former operator also completed 41 rotary air blast drill holes to 20m or less in the 90s.
White Cliff said the drilling produced a best intercept of 9m going 1.54 grams per tonne gold from just 8m depth – apparently outside the anomalous soil sample results.
Mineralisation at McCaskill’s Hill is expected to be similar to that identified at the company’s Cracker Jack project 4km to the north. Both areas are located on the southern extension of the Burnakura Shear Zone.
White Cliff plans to further test previously unsampled zones at Cracker Jack. Recent results from 16 samples collected from old trenches and sheared mullock spread at Cracker Jack returned over 1 gram per tonne gold in 10 samples and bumper grades including 37.3 grams per tonne gold, 32.5 g/t gold and 26.7 g/t gold.
Drilling at Cracker Jack and McCaskill’s Hill is expected to follow when all the results from multi-element geochemistry and soil sampling are in.
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