- 01Airstrip East strike more than doubled to 730m.
- 02Best hit: 20m at 2.51g/t, incl. 2m at 9.83g/t.
- 03Gold trend remains open; deeper drilling planned.
New Murchison Gold (ASX: NMG) has more than doubled the defined mineralised strike at its Airstrip East prospect to approximately 730 metres following a drilling campaign that returned further high-grade gold intersections.
The prospect forms part of the Garden Gully gold project near Meekatharra in Western Australia, where drilling has traced gold occurrences along an approximately five kilometres corridor on the Abernethy Shear.
One of the strongest new intersections returned 20m at 2.51 grams per tonne gold from 50m, including 2m at 9.83g/t, as the exploration team identified higher-grade shoots within a broader mineralised zone.
Before the latest work, Airstrip East had been defined over roughly 310m, but step-out drilling pushed its mineralised extent about 140m south-west and 280m north-east.
The expanded Airstrip East trend remains open to the north-east, south-west, and at depth, with the wider shear corridor still largely untested below about 100m vertical depth.
Higher Grades and Extended Strike
Additional shallow drilling returned 13m at 3.03g/t from 46m, including 1m at 22.1g/t, alongside 4m at 7.40g/t from 50m and a near-surface intersection of 3m at 7.90g/t from 2m.
Together, the broader intersections and concentrated high-grade intervals indicate at least two prospective shoots that are still open below the shallow drilling completed so far.
“Every step-out line in this program has returned gold mineralisation, and APSRC118 has returned one of our best intercepts at Airstrip so far,” chief executive officer Alex Passmore said.
“We now have around 730m of mineralised strike at Airstrip East that remains open, sitting on a 5km corridor that has barely been drilled below 100m.”
“The next step is to drill deeper beneath the high-grade shoots, and we are looking forward to the assays from the new holes to the north-east.”
Geological Picture Taking Shape
The exploration program comprised 155 holes for 12,110m using reverse circulation and slimline reverse circulation (SRC) drilling, including step-out and reconnaissance lines targeting parallel structures.
Assays had been received for 127 holes, of which 37 produced at least one intersection meeting the threshold of two gram-metres, a measure combining grade and interval length.
Gold at Airstrip East occurs with quartz veining in strongly sheared mafic rocks, with weathered near-surface mineralisation above structurally controlled primary zones.
Two relatively shallow SRC lines between known intersections returned only weakly anomalous results, leaving open the possibility that the target mineralisation lies below their tested depth.
Abernethy Corridor Targets
Airstrip sits at the north-eastern end of the Abernethy Shear corridor, which includes the Abernethy South and Kingswood prospects and has recorded gold intersections across multiple exploration campaigns.
The company has also drilled seven SRC holes about 1.2km north-east of Airstrip East, where geological logging identified sheared and silica-altered dolerite containing pyrite, although assay confirmation remains outstanding.
Results from those holes form part of 28 assays still pending from the completed program, providing another test of the mineralised system beyond the presently defined Airstrip East strike.
Next-stage work is being planned around deeper RC and diamond drilling beneath the higher-grade shoots, alongside further tests of shallow gaps and extensions at both ends of the prospect.
The results will feed into a structural interpretation of the broader Abernethy corridor to help rank follow-up targets at Kingswood and Abernethy South.
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