Eastern Metals identifies new anomalous zones at Browns Reef project
Field work at the Browns Reef project in the southern Cobar Basin of New South Wales has identified new zones of anomalous base metal mineralisation for owner Eastern Metals (ASX: EMS).
Highly anomalous grades were returned from surface rock chip samples during mapping and portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) traverses along the inferred Woorara Fault, to the north of the known high-grade Pineview and Evergreen deposits.
The new zones have been named ‘Kelpie Hill’ and ‘Windmill Dam’ and will be late inclusions to an induced polarisation survey planned for Evergreen.
Geochemical trends
Chief executive officer Ley Kingdom said the results confirmed the ability of mapping and soil pXRF analysis to identify geochemical trends at Browns Reef.
“These are highly encouraging initial results from our field work programs, which have highlighted new anomalous areas along the prospective Woorara Fault,” she said.
“Kelpie Hill and Windmill Dam will be high-priority targets for testing, which may represent a continuous zone of mineralisation and potentially a northern extension of Evergreen.”
Polymetallic system
The advanced Browns Reef project is a structurally controlled, polymetallic system extending along the Woorara Fault and the Preston and Clements Formations contact.
Eastern Metals’ field work in April was aimed at ground-truthing and adding to drilling and geological mapping data originally acquired in the 1970s by previous owner Electrolytic Zinc.
The company said most paddocks in the area had been cropped or cultivated at some stage and gossanous material was evident in stone-raked piles along the entire strike length, defining a north-north-west trending zone.
Ground reconnaissance also revealed that gossanous float material was often present along the approximate trend of the inferred mineralised zone.
The company collected a total of 28 samples of gossanous rock material for assaying, comprising an average of up to 2 kilograms per sample from multiple pieces of surface float.
Follow-up program
Eastern Metals completed a second field program in mid-May using a SciAps X555 pXRF analyser to conduct soil readings every 10m along east-to-west traverses.
The program tested pXRF capabilities for detecting lead in soils and identifying geochemical trends across different lithologies at Browns Reef.
The results showed that lead and arsenic anomalism was readily traceable within the soil profiles and decreasing lead results could effectively map out the basalt and Clements Formation contact zones.
Rock chip samples paired with the pXRF readings were able to distinguish further prospective zones to the north and south of the Evergreen deposit.