Gold and base metals explorer Carawine Resources Limited (ASX:CWX) has commenced a follow-up RC drilling campaign at its Hercules prospect, targeting extensions to the gold discovery reported earlier this year.
The recent Hercules discovery is part of the company’s large Tropicana North Project located in the Tropicana and Yamarna regions of Western Australia’s north-eastern goldfields.
This major follow-up drilling programme comprises an initial phase of 18 RC drill holes and five diamond core (DD) drill holes primarily targeting extensions to high-grade gold mineralisation discovered at Hercules.
Managing Director. David Boyd, said the company was moving quickly to consolidate its understanding of Hercules, two months after announcing the prospect’s potential to become a major new high-grade gold deposit in WA’s north-eastern goldfields.
We are looking forward to the next three months of strong exploration activity at Tropicana North, starting with this RC drilling program at Hercules and then diamond core drilling planned to follow. Results will be reported progressively throughout the programs, as they become available,” Mr Boyd said.
“We have also planned additional RC drilling to explore our “Big Freeze” gold prospect, a 900m-long, greater than 0.3g/t gold anomaly defined from regional drilling along the Hercules Shear Zone, once the Hercules program is complete. This also gives us the option of continuing with a second phase of drilling at Hercules to follow-up on positive results.”
Hercules is an advanced gold prospect within Carawine’s Thunderstruck Joint Venture.
In January 2021, the company completed 12 RC drill holes at Hercules as part of its first drilling campaign at Tropicana North, designed to test the tenor and orientation of historically reported gold mineralisation. This drilling returned multiple record high-grade gold intersections, with mineralisation open along strike and at depth, confirming Hercules as a significant gold discovery.
To date, drilling at Hercules has defined a sub-vertical mineralised structure, the “main lode”, which extends for at least 260m along strike, from the base of transported cover at 35m below surface to more than 140m below surface and remains open. Carawine’s drilling also discovered a “multiple lode zone”, with additional lodes identified parallel to the main lode in drill holes TNRC008 and TNRC020. These multiple lodes define a much wider zone of gold mineralisation starting just 70m from surface.
The planned follow-up drilling programme is designed to test the main lode over more than 400m of strike length from below the base of transported cover to more than 200m down-dip. Holes have also been planned to better define the orientation of the multiple lode zone, and test for potential extensions.
A component of diamond drilling is planned to follow the RC programme, which will test mineralisation at depth as well as providing important structural information around existing mineralised intervals.
The Hercules RC programme is expected to continue into June, with the diamond core programme expected to take around four to six weeks to complete. At this stage, diamond drilling is planned to follow the RC programme.
However, Mr Boyd said this can be brought forward if a suitable diamond rig becomes available in the meantime. Samples are expected to be submitted for assay in batches throughout the program, with assay results to be released as they become available.
RC drilling is also planned to follow up a number of significant gold anomalies along the Hercules Shear Zone, including at the company’s new, recently announced Big Freeze prospect. This drilling is expected to follow completion of the Hercules RC programme.