Gateway Mining Limited (ASX: GML) has identified extensive new regional gold corridors outside of the main gold trend at its flagship 100%-owned Gidgee Gold Project in Western Australia.
The results from recently completed regional aircore (AC) drilling traverses from various strategic targets within the broader project, combined with an important regional assessment and geological review, has opened up a significant new exploration and discovery opportunity for the company outside of the currently defined resources.
The AC drilling programme was designed to test a number of prospective targets away from the primary Montague Granodiorite intrusion and its associated mineralisation.
While the highly mineralised margins of the granodiorite margin remain a priority focus for upcoming programs of exploration and resource extension, the company is also committed to systematically evaluating the potential of the wider Gidgee Gold Project.
Evaluation of previous exploration data has identified a series of large-scale mineralised corridors defined by shallow, wide-spaced drilling. A series of key geophysical features have been observed in regional magnetic and gravity data within these corridors that required either additional drilling or a first-pass test.
At the Flametree prospect a total of 54 holes for 3,748m of AC drilling were completed to systematically extend a zone of near-surface oxide gold mineralisation intersected in previous RAB and RC drilling. Gateway previously completed a single RC drill hole at Flametree to collect samples that confirmed the free-milling nature of the oxide gold in this location.
Drilling successfully intersected two flat-lying zones of mineralisation. Highlights included:
- 5 metres @ 10.4 g/t Au from 52 metres
- 4 metres @ 3.8 g/t Au from 20 metres
- 9 metres @ 1.1 g/t Au from 17 metres
- 5 metres @ 3.8 g/t Au from 23 metres
- 3 metres @ 3.5 g/t Au from 44 metres
- 17 metres @ 0.8 g/t Au from 69 metres, including 11 metres @ 1.0 g/t Au; and
- 5 metres @ 1.9g/t Au from 39 metres.
Gateway’s Managing Director, Peter Langworthy, said the results from strategic regional aircore drilling at Gidgee combined with a major regional geological review of the wider Project had delivered a number of important outcomes.
“While our core strategic focus remains to unlock the significant potential that exists around the margin of the Montague Granodiorite and along strike from the existing Resources, we also see outstanding potential to make new discoveries outside of the main mineralised contact.
“The outcomes of the aircore programme and our recent regional work has vindicated this belief and highlighted the enormous opportunity to make major new discoveries in completely new areas.
This supports our view that the Gidgee Project forms part of a major gold system and we are now developing a broader pipeline of targets with the potential to deliver a quantum increase in our overall Resource position.
We are very pleased with the results of this aircore programme. The results confirm the potential for a major shallow oxide gold system within a series of major structural corridors that have not really ever been systematically tested.
“This presents an outstanding shallow target for cost-effective aircore drilling, which we are planning to resume in parallel with an ongoing process of target ranking and evaluation that will underpin our broader exploration programs for the rest of this year. We look forward to presenting the full results of this work in the near future.”
