Navarre Minerals hits high-grade gold in drilling at Stawell Corridor and St Arnaud projects
A notable drill intersection was 20m at 1.8g/t gold from 33m, including 1m at 9.2g/t gold.
Navarre Minerals (ASX: NML) has reported further high-grade gold intercepts from eight diamond core drill holes covering its flagship Stawell Corridor and St Arnaud gold projects in Victoria.
The 4,455m phase one program covered three previously unreported holes at Stawell, as well as the final five holes of a 13-hole campaign on the New Bendigo Line within historic working at St Arnaud.
The Stawell holes were completed for a total 1,242m, with two testing the southern margin of the Resolution prospect.
The third was drilled in the opposite direction to test the Benno basalt dome target, identified to the east of the Irvine basalt from geological mapping and in geophysics.
Anomalous gold was intersected in all three holes with a best result of 1.1m at 14 grams per tonne gold from 369.1m in the main lode and outside of the current inferred resource estimate, implying potential for mineral inventory growth.
New Bendigo results
Results from drilling at the New Bendigo Line advanced the potential of the newly-defined No.1 East Reef, located approximately 40m east of historic mining on Main Reef and believed to contain significant areas of visible gold and strong sulphide mineralisation.
The new quartz reef structure has been confirmed over a 250m strike extent, and remains open to the north and at depth.
Highlights included an intercept of 1.4m at 13.1g/t gold within a broader interval of 6.2m at 3.7g/t from 114.7m; and 1.9m at 1.5g/t gold from 208.4m.
Previous assays have included up to 38.3g/t gold, irregularly distributed within a broader mineralised quartz reef of up to 30m true width.
The target area at St Arnaud is close to the old New Bendigo mine, which was the second largest gold mine within the rich St Arnaud goldfield, producing 400,000 ounces between 1855 and 1916 at an average grade of 15g/t.
Navarre said the latest results confirm the potential to discover significant economic gold mineralisation beneath, and adjacent to, the shallow historic gold workings.
Nelson Line drilling
Maiden diamond core testing has recently commenced on the nearby Nelson Line, also within the St Arnaud project, for an expected 4,000m campaign.
Resource potential will be tested beneath and adjacent to the old Comstock open pit which was mined late last century.
Navarre will also test for economic mineralisation at other targets following encouraging gold assay results returned from reconnaissance aircore drilling.
Exploration incentive
Earlier this week, Navarre received an allocation of up to $1.25 million in tax credits under the federal government’s Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive scheme.
The scheme recognises small companies involved with greenfields mineral exploration in Australia by creating exploration credits using a portion of their tax losses from eligible expenditure and distributing these to investors to purchase new shares.
Any carry forward losses are reduced proportionately to reflect the amount of exploration credits created.
Navarre’s tax credits will be distributed to eligible investors.