Marindi Metals scoops up ‘hundreds’ of watermelon seed-shaped gold nuggets at Bellary

Marindi Metals (ASX: MZN) has scooped up “hundreds” of the notorious watermelon seed-shaped gold nuggets from its Bellary Dome conglomerate gold project, which is close to Novo Resources (TSXV: NOV) tenements in Western Australia’s Pilbara.

The nuggets, amounting to more than 6 ounces, were recovered from an alluvial “trap site” about 1.2km from the Edney’s Find prospect, which was trenched during the early 1970s.

Similar to those found at Novo’s tenements, Marindi’s latest find included nuggets that were coarse and watermelon seed shaped.

This second preliminary exploration phase has been completed with all samples sent off for analysis and results due mid-month.

“The Bellary Dome project continues to produce exciting results for Marindi and this latest development provides further support for the argument regarding the widespread distribution of gold mineralisation across our project and, potentially, across the entire basin,” Marindi managing director Simon Lawson said.

He added the position of the conglomerates at Bellary Dome was similar to the “gold bearing horizon” at Novo and Artemis Resources (ASX: ARV) Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward projects which were the scene of numerous gold nugget discoveries and are now undergoing more advanced exploration.

“The appearance and quantity of these new gold nuggets is intriguing and suggests that our approach of continuing to explore the Bellary Dome project using low-cost methods is well-founded.”

Today’s announcement follows previous discoveries where Marindi identified visible conglomerate and fine gold mineralisation at the project from initial sampling across the project.

This first campaign returned gold grading 38.2 gram per tonne and 19.4g/t from outcrop grab samples extracted from more than 20 sites across the entire project.

“Having the ability to leverage off the work of independent prospectors to evaluate projects like Bellary Dome is a really attractive proposition for us – particularly as we are dealing with mineralisation that can be difficult to evaluate due to it depositional environment and the coarse nature of the gold itself,” Mr Lawson said.

Gold rush in the Pilbara

Marindi’s gold nugget find is the latest out of a host of explorers in the region, hoping to substantiate the theory that the Pilbara may be home to one of the world’s largest undiscovered gold deposits, akin to that of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Triggering the gold rush was the coarse watermelon seed shape of the gold, which has been said to be similar to the nuggets found at Witwatersrand which has produced more than 1.5 billion ounces of gold and plenty more to come.

Heading up the Pilbara gold explorer pack are Novo and Artemis, which sparked the frenzy last year with their Purdy’s Reward discoveries.

The market bought in on today’s discovery news, with Marindi’s share price rocketing 25% to reach A$0.015 by early afternoon.

Marindi Metals has unearthed ‘hundreds’ of watermelon seed-shaped gold nuggets at its Bellary Dome project in WA’s Pilbara.