Battery Minerals starts diamond drilling at White Rabbit gold-copper district
Battery Minerals (ASX: BAT) has kicked off a maiden diamond drilling program at the White Rabbit district within its Stavely-Stawell copper-gold project in western Victoria.
The planned activity comprises 1300 metres and is designed to test priority gold targets at the Coxs Find, Frankfurt and Cosmopolitan prospects.
Work will initially focus on Coxs Find where a discrete strong induced polarisation (IP) chargeability anomaly was found to lie beneath disseminated sulphide-associated gold anomalism in aircore drilling, returning up to 430 grams per tonne gold in rock chips.
Aircore drilling comprised 59 shallow holes for 2502m to refine bedrock drill targets in the Frankfurt area, with results due in early June.
High-grade rock chips
Coxs Find is defined by multiple high-grade rock chip results from exploration in 2021 which are associated with sericite-silica-pyrite alteration.
The mineralisation has been characterised using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and laser ablation ICPMS mineral chemistry (La-ICPMS), which indicates an association between gold and bedrock (primary) sulphides (pyrite, galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite).
An IP survey was carried out to map the distribution of sulphides and define priority drill targets.
The location of a strong and discrete chargeability anomaly beneath an end-of-hole aircore gold anomalism and strongly anomalous rock chips showed the chargeability may provide a direct targeting indicator.
The effectiveness of the technique has resulted in a planned extension of the survey due to commence in June to identify additional drill targets and enable 3D modelling of the data.
Gold anomalism
The Frankfurt prospect is characterised by an open 160m-wide target zone of strong multipoint gold in aircore anomalism associated with a ‘fertile’ multi-element signature.
It has previously returned results including 8m at 0.79g/t gold from 27m to end-of-hole.
Recent infill and extensional aircore drilling comprising 59 holes for 2502m is expected to further define the extents of anomalism to refine the position of diamond drilling.
Historical pits and workings
Cosmopolitan comprises 500m of north-to-south trending historical pits and underground workings which were exploited to the water table at a depth of approximately 40m.
Quartz veins from waste rock piles surrounding the workings have returned up to 24g/t gold and have been observed to contain visible molybdenum and pyrite.
The new diamond drilling program will test multiple interpreted orebody geometries beneath the prospect’s most significant historical workings.