Mining

Heritage survey leads into new drilling campaign at Impact Minerals’ Doonia gold project

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By Imelda Cotton - 
Impact Minerals ASX IPT Doonia gold project Kambalda Western Australia Ngadju Group Heritage Survey

Traditional landowners have launched a heritage survey ahead of Impact Minerals’ planned drilling in WA.

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A heritage survey run by the traditional Ngadju Group will commence this week at Impact Minerals’ (ASX: IPT) 80%-owned Doonia gold project, located 75km east of the world-class St Ives gold mining centre in Western Australia.

The survey is being done in preparation for a 3,000m drilling campaign in November to test a large gold-bismuth soil geochemistry anomaly.

A drilling contract is currently being negotiated and all other approvals are in place.

Impact managing director Dr Mike Jones said Doonia had become a priority following COVID-19 lockdowns on Australia’s east coast.

“We have worked hard to bring the drill program [at Doonia] forward following the severe hampering of progress at our flagship Broken Hill project caused by the COVID restrictions in New South Wales,” he said.

“Doonia is a compelling geochemical and geophysical target [and] we are in advanced negotiations for a drilling contract to have the rig turning in November.”

Intrusion-hosted deposit

The Doonia project was identified during a review of WA’s eastern goldfields for intrusion-hosted gold deposits in light of De Grey Mining’s (ASX: DEG) recent major Hemi discovery in the Pilbara.

It has been further enhanced by Lefroy Exploration’s (ASX: LEX) discovery of significant gold-copper-magnetite mineralisation hosted by a magnetic porphyry intrusion at the Burns project, 20km to the west.

Doonia and Burns were first identified in the same regional exploration program by WMC Resources in the 1990s with modest gold anomalism found in both areas through broad spaced aircore drilling.

Neither discovery was followed up at the time.

Magnetic anomaly

Regional data shows a large ovoid magnetic anomaly directly beneath the Doonia project estimated to be at least 6sq km in size.

It is believed to be emplaced at some depth into the meta-sedimentary rocks which underlie most of the project area.

A cluster of smaller well-defined magnetic anomalies occur above the central east part of the larger anomaly.

These have short strike lengths and do not appear to be part of the linear stratigraphy that characterises much of the surrounding greenstone belt terrain.

They are interpreted as possible near-surface magnetic porphyry intrusions which may be related to and sourced from the larger buried intrusion.