Gateway Mining kicks off major drilling program at Gidgee gold project
Assays from the 22,000m drilling program at Gidgee are expected next quarter.
Perth-based junior Gateway Mining (ASX: GML) has commenced a major exploration program at its wholly-owned Gidgee gold project in the Murchison region of Western Australia.
The company kicked off 16,000 metres of aircore drilling earlier this month, which aimed to extend the strike at the Julias discovery (including to the northeast where it is completely open) and exploring the neighbouring Flametree target to the south.
It will be followed by 6,000m of reverse circulation work at Julias to test along strike from recent reverse circulation results, including 11m at 2.6 grams per tonne gold from 24m; 10m at 3.0g/t gold from 38m; 9m at 3.5g/t gold from 67m; and 9m at 3.4g/t gold from 55m.
Those results confirmed the presence of a consistent oxide gold zone over a 500m strike length at Julias which remains open to the north and south and significantly elevated the area as a priority focus for follow-up drilling.
Gateway said a drill pattern would be completed “of sufficient density” to enable a maiden mineral resource estimate to be completed for the Julias discovery.
Kashmir drilling
Additional reverse circulation drilling will be completed at the Kashmir prospect, located on the southeast margin of the underexplored Montague Granodiorite Dome and along strike to the south of Horizon Gold’s (ASX: HRN) 204,000 ounce Howards deposit.
Drilling will aim to extend the strike of shallow bedrock mineralisation announced in January further to the north inside Gateway’s tenure.
The mineralisation was defined beneath the targeted Kashmir gold-in-soil anomaly, with assays including 15m at 1g/t gold from 15m; 5m at 1.7g/t gold from 36m; and 3m at 3.2g/t gold from 7m.
Existing resource
Gateway’s systematic drilling program will be conducted within 5km of the existing 449,000oz resource at Gidgee.
The company hopes the results will build on the resource, which was last updated in December with the discovery of the 67,000oz Evermore and 99,000oz Achilles North/Airport prospects.
Managing director Mark Cossom said there is significant potential for new, shallow discoveries to be made within the targeted area.
“Our exploration field season is already in full swing to expand the exciting Julias-Flametree gold trend and upgrade Julias to JORC resource status,” he said.
“With additional drilling also planned at Kashmir, we will be working towards another resource upgrade for Gidgee before year end.”
Project location
The Gidgee gold project is located within the highly-endowed, Archaen-aged Gum Creek Greenstone belt, 800km northeast of Perth.
It comprises 1,000 square kilometres of tenure, with historic mining between 1986 and 1992 producing around 1.5Moz from five shallow oxide open pits.
The majority of Gateway’s exploration at Gidgee is centred on the margin of the Montague Granodiorite with the aim of discovering a large-scale gold system