Targeted soil sampling at Red Mountain Mining’s (ASX: RMX) Oaky Creek South prospect within the Armidale antimony-gold project in New South Wales has returned high-grade assays exceeding 100 parts per million antimony and a peak value of 1,200ppm.
A significant auger soil result of 1.36% antimony — or over 10 times the next highest value — was also recorded at the historical workings, with a highest gold value of 14 parts per billion.
A second grid 300 metres north of Oaky Creek South returned strong anomalous arsenic (a pathfinder for gold), with a maximum value of 259ppm, and remains open to the north-west towards the main grid and south towards the historical antimony workings.
Follow-Up Exploration
The highly-encouraging results support the interpretation that significant antimony-gold mineralisation may be present at Oaky Creek South.
Red Mountain has commenced planning for follow-up exploration next month to expand the grid, test the north-east extension of the antimony-in-soil anomaly and generate new drill targets.
Armidale extends for 85 kilometres along the western side of the Peel Fault within the New England Orogen, recognised as Australia’s premier antimony district.
The underexplored Peel Fault System has more than 400 known orogenic gold and base metal mineral occurrences along its over 400km strike extent, with fewer than 200 mostly shallow drill holes over its length.
East Hills Soil Sampling
Red Mountain also collected 78 soil samples at Armidale’s East Hills prospect in September, targeting antimony mineralisation across a grid centred on a historical pit.
The results defined a parallel anomaly close to the historical workings with a peak value of 104ppm antimony, as well as a previously reported rock chip sample containing 9.9% antimony.
The samples suggest that mineralisation at East Hills is part of a similar orogenic antimony-gold system to the one in place at the larger Oaky Creek, which remains the company’s priority target.
Oaky Creek and East Hills are among several orogenic antimony-gold occurrences within the Armidale project.
Each has strong structural, lithological, and mineralogical similarities to Larvotto Resources’ (ASX: LRV) Hillgrove project, Australia’s largest known antimony deposit.
