Venturex Resources (ASX: VXR) has identified gold occurrences at the Mays Find prospect, part of its Whim Creek Copper-Zinc Project Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
The gold occurrences which are associated with the Lower Fortescue Group conglomerates, were identified during recent initial field exploration activities, supported by a review of historical gold exploration data at Mays Find, which is located 3km south of the Mons Cupri copper-zinc deposit.
Mays Find Prospect showing gridded & imaged historic soil sampling, rock chip sampling and recent stream sediment sampling.
Executive Director, Anthony Reilly, said the historical data stems from soil sampling carried out in 2007 by Straits Resources which collected soil samples over Mays Find as part of a broader exploration program aimed at discovering additional base metal deposits.
The soil samples were collected every 50m along 200m spaced lines over a strike length of 5.2km. The samples were assayed for a range of elements including gold.
Mr Reilly said that while the assays produced strongly anomalous results of up to 52ppb Au, there was no further commentary or follow-up work undertaken at the time on the gold potential of the area.
The gold results show broad anomalies associated with areas of mapped outcropping Lower Fortescue conglomerates.
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One broad gold anomaly is also the location of the panned gold reported by Duval in 1984 and the recently located historical prospecting patch.
At the time of the discovery, Duval explored the rock sequence stratigraphically below the Lower Fortescue Group without locating the source of the gold.
Mr Reilly said Venturex considers that the gold is likely to be sourced from the Lower Fortescue conglomerate and has recently completed stream sediment sampling along the north-eastern side of the outcrop.
In addition, the company has located several fine (<1mm) gold particles by panning sediments collected from the creek considered to be the site of Duval’s reported gold occurrence.
As part of the historical gold review, the vompany discovered 57 rock chip samples collected from the Mays Find area in 2014 that had not been assayed for gold. Many of these samples were described as various sedimentary rocks including conglomerate. The laboratory pulps derived from these rock chip samples stored at the company’s Whim Creek Project have been retrieved and sent to the laboratory for a gold fire assay.
The results from this work will be used to determine future exploration methods to be employed to pursue the conglomerate-gold potential at Mays Find.
Mr Reilly said upcoming work is likely to include additional detailed mapping of the conglomerate and sedimentary units as well as stream sediment sampling and in-fill soil and rock sampling along the entire 5-6km length of the Mays Find area. This work will likely be supported by metal detector traverses of the scree slope below the conglomerate outcrops.
