Iceni Gold reveals high-grade veinlets at Christmas Gift, plans further drilling

Iceni Gold (ASX: ICL) has exposed multiple “spectacular” gold-bearing quartz veinlets within a narrow sheared basalt-interflow sediment contact in recent work conducted at the 14 Mile Well gold project in Western Australia.

New work by the company has exposed the structure over an approximately 20m strike length.

Iceni is now preparing to define priority drill targets using the new data added to the project’s advanced geological model, with planning for a multi-hole diamond drill program to evaluate the down dip position of the Christmas Gift shear, targeting drilling to commence in the June quarter.

Further confirmation

Managing director Wade Johnson said the high-grade potential of the area has been further confirmed, with gold collected by prospectors from a crushed bulk sample of ore-bearing rock, including the quartz veinlets from the sample trench, producing a 9.5-ounce gold doré bar.

“The shallow excavation and sampling activities at Christmas Gift, exposing the rich gold-bearing quartz veinlets within the shear zone, is an exciting development for the company,” Mr Johnson said.

“The additional field work has improved our knowledge of the host structure, which has advanced our understanding to further explore the Christmas Gift structure and also provides a geological model that we can apply elsewhere in the Everleigh Well area.”

“The strike length of the structure is open, drill sites have been prepared and we are looking forward to commencing drilling shortly to evaluate the down dip extent of the structure and rapidly advance this priority target.”

Historic district

Christmas Gift is located within the Everleigh Well target area, central to the 14 Mile Well Project.

The Everleigh area is part of the historic Redcastle gold mining centre that dates back to the early days of gold exploration in WA and is renowned for its prolific gold nugget finds.

Everleigh also contains a number of historical prospecting pits, shafts and shallow workings, in addition to numerous alluvial gold workings distributed over a wide area.

The Christmas Gift prospect is located at one of the historical workings where sampling by the company during 2023 confirmed the presence of the narrow high-grade quartz vein with abundant visible gold.

The recent exploration work by Iceni involved the excavation of a small sampling trench along the trend, improving the visibility of the Christmas Gift structure that trends approximately north-west and dips 55 degrees to the north-east.

This work has exposed the true nature and width of the gold-bearing shear zone and has confirmed the prospectivity of the target.

Exploration boost

The current exploration work received a recent funding boost after Iceni received $2.2 million from surplus asset sales.

The company also recently brought in the highly-regarded Mr Johnson as its new managing director to accelerate and drive the next phase of gold exploration at 14 Mile Well.

A geologist with more than 30 years’ experience, principally focused on gold exploration in WA, he was most recently the managing director of Lefroy Exploration (ASX: LEX), where he led the team to expand the asset portfolio and grow the resource base to more than 1 million ounces of gold.