Western Mines Group seeks to expand newly granted Jasper Hill project
Western Mines Group has been granted a tenement covering its Jasper Hill gold project and has pegged a nearby area.
Newly listed Western Mines Group (ASX: WMG) has been granted a tenement covering its Jasper Hill gold project in Western Australia and aims to expand it further by pegging a neighbouring area.
The company made its ASX debut last month following an oversubscribed $5.5 million initial public offering with the proceeds assigned to an aggressive exploration program across its eight WA gold and nickel projects.
The granted Jasper Hill tenement area covers 11 blocks totalling 31.5sq km and is located about 50km from the Rock of Ages project, where the company recently announced plans to undertake maiden drilling to follow up on encouraging rock chip results.
Jasper Hill lies on the Merolia Greenstone Belt and is contiguous to the neighbouring gold mines of Lord Byron, immediately to the south, and Fish, to the east. These deposits were mined from 2010 to 2012 and had a combined remaining resource of 156,000 ounces at 1.9 grams per tonne gold when sold into private ownership in 2019.
Newly pegged application area
The newly pegged application, P39/6267, lies about 3km south of the company’s granted area and contains 1.5km strike length of a known mineralised trend.
Here, historical shallow rotary air blast and reverse circulation drilling during the 1980s returned results including: 4m at 3.4g/t gold from 12m, including 1m at 9.8g/t from 14m; and 8.5m at 1.15g/t from 30m with the hole still in mineralisation at its total depth. Little or no follow-up work has been undertaken since that time.
Western Mines managing director Caedmon Marriott said the company, upon seeing this nearby ground was free, “raced out and pegged it” to expand Jasper Hill’s project footprint.
“This portion of greenstone belt is relatively lightly explored, with limited regional exploration after the discovery of the nearby Lord Byron and Fish gold mines.”
“There’s often no better place to explore in the WA goldfields than contiguous to existing mines,” he added.
Upcoming work
Coupled with the nearby Rock of Ages, Jasper Hill will be Western Mines’ primary gold project.
The company said it will first complete a heritage survey of the recently granted tenement area, then plans to undertake field activities including mapping, soil sampling and ground magnetics.
This work will aim to delineate target areas for a first pass air core or slimline reverse circulation drilling program.