Hamelin Gold (ASX: HMG) has identified a major extension of the Fremlins gold system within the West Tanami project in Western Australia.
Our understanding of the geology and mineralisation within the West Tanami has advanced significantly over the past 12 months. We have seen indications of intense, near surface leaching of gold across the project which brings into question the effectiveness of shallow drilling,” Managing Director Peter Bewick said.
“This has now been confirmed with a broad zone of anomalous gold discovered at Fremlins below historical 7.0 metre deep RAB drillholes. This means the three kilometre long gold geochemical anomaly at Fremlins South remains ineffectively tested and expands the Fremlins gold system to strike length of 9 kilometres.”
Fremlins Prospect
The Fremlins gold prospect is located eight kilometres south of the Coyote Gold Mine. Historical drilling at Fremlins is dominated by shallow RAB, vacuum and RC drilling that has outlined two parallel gold trends within the regolith that extend over six kilometres in strike. Regolith hosted gold anomalism at Fremlins sits below a 20 metre thick leached zone.
The Fremlins prospect is underexplored with only five holes drilled below a depth of 120 metres, testing for high grade gold mineralisation within the larger camp scale target.
A review of surface geochemical data to the south of Fremlins has identified a three kilometre long, coherent gold anomaly in LAG sampling. Historical RAB drilling over the defined anomaly was drilled to a consistent 7.0 metre depth and ended within the leached zone.
Hamelin interpreted that these RAB holes were an ineffective test of the LAG anomaly and designed two 400 metre spaced aircore drill lines (80 metre spaced holes) across the anomaly to test for gold anomalism deeper in the regolith profile.
This first pass aircore drill program successfully outlined a +200 metre wide, +100ppb gold anomaly below the leached zone and confirmed the ineffectiveness of the historical shallow RAB drilling. These results have extended the potential strike of the Fremlins gold system to over nine kilometres of strike.
A second phase of infill aircore drilling has now commenced at Fremlins across the two previously drilled sections.
Due to the relatively thin regolith profile at Fremlins closer spaced drilling (20 to 40 metre spaced holes) will be required to identify potential higher grade corridors within the broad gold anomaly. The remainder of the three kilometre long gold anomaly at Fremlins will be drill tested early in the 2024 field season once a heritage survey has been completed and all regulatory approvals are in place.
