Great Western Exploration Limited (ASX: GTE) has announced encouraging results from the RC drilling program at its Yandal West gold project in WA.
The company reported that the latest drilling indicates that aeromagnetic data is mapping out gold mineralised shear zones at Yandal West. The company called it a significant development in the understanding of the nature of mineralisation, which will help guide future drilling.
New results include 3m @ 15.02 g/t gold from 51m (incl. 1m @ 30.9 g/t gold), 2m @ 5.87 g/t gold from 74m (incl. 1m @ 11.1 g/t gold), and 4m @ 2.51 g/t gold from 20m.
The company announced that three large mineralised shear zones have been identified; Harris Find Shear Zone (~8.5km strike), May Queen Shear Zone (~6.5km strike), and the Ives Find Shear Zone (~6.5km strike). The company said that high grade gold is associated with all three shear zones.
GTE noted that visible gold observed within the Harris Find and May Queen shear zones, together with screen fire assay results indicating significant coarse gold, supports the potential for higher grade areas to enhance economics.
GTE reported that the next round of drilling will commence next month and will focus on the high priority Harris Find Shear zone located within the May Queen prospect. This drilling is planned to be designed to extend the strike of the known gold mineralisation and demonstrate its potential scale.
Yandal West gold project
The Yandal West gold project is located within the world class Yandal gold belt, approximately 55km north of the Bronzewing gold deposit (3.5Moz) and 60km south of the Jundee gold mine (10Moz), in Western Australia.
The three important prospects at Yandal West project include May Queen, Harris Find, and Ives Find. All three of them are large gold bearing shear zones.
It may be noted that in 2017, Great Western had acquired 100% of the Ives Find goldfield and 80% of the Harris Find goldfield and consolidated both goldfields into one project.
The company has now announced the results from the latest round of RC drilling at Yandal West gold project.
RC drilling at Yandal West
Great Western announced that a total of 10 holes for approximately 1,024m were completed across three prospects, May Queen, Harris Find, and Ives Find at Yandal West gold project.
The company said that the Harris Find Shear Zone can be traced approximately 8km, May Queen Shear Zone can be traced approximately 6.5km, and Ives Find Shear Zone can be traced approximately 6.5 km in the aeromagnetic data.
The company reported that three holes, HFRC095, HFRC096, and HFRC097 were completed at May Queen; two holes, HFRC093 and HFRC094 were completed at Harris Find; and five holes, IFRC085, IFRC086, IFRC087, IFRC088, and IFRC089 were completed at Ives Find.
Bell Miner lode
The company reported that at the Ives Find prospect located within the Ives Find Shear Zone, the recent drilling continued to intersect high-grade gold mineralisation at the Bell Miner lode.
The company said that the lode appears to be localised at the intersection of two faults with gold mineralisation plunging down the intersection and remains open down plunge.
High-grade drill results
The company reported that the drilling results at the Bell Miner lode to date includes: 1m @ 7.28 g/t gold from 43m; 7m @ 2.52 g/t gold from 34m (incl 2m @ 4.8 g/t); 4m @ 9.03 g/t gold from 38m; 3m @ 52.38 g/t gold from 34m; 2m @ 2.96 g/t gold from 33m (incl 1m @ 5.03 g/t); 6m @ 4.72 g/t gold from 54m (incl 2m @ 13.025 g/t); 3m @ 15.02 g/t gold from 51m; and 2m @ 5.87 g/t gold from 74m (incl 1m @ 11.1 g/t).
Coarse grained gold mineralisation at Ives Find, May Queen
The company announced after visible gold was observed in drilling at both the Ives Find and May Queen prospects, further testing of some screen fire assays was done to better understand the nature of the gold mineralisation at Ives Find.
The company reported that the results confirm that a significant component of the gold mineralisation is coarse grained (nuggety gold). This makes gold distribution highly variable, occurring as pockets of high grade within more continuous lower grade structures.
The Company reported that it will review its sampling procedures to ensure it is optimised for this style of gold mineralisation.
A highly encouraging drilling update
The company said that the drilling resulted in a significant development in the understanding of the nature of the gold mineralisation at Yandal West gold project, and extended the Bell Miner high-grade gold lode at the Ives Find prospect.
The company noted that the drilling demonstrated that the gold mineralisation and associated shearing correlates strongly with discrete magnetic units.
GTE reported that further field checking along these magnetic units found strong shearing in areas of outcrop, and a strong correlation with gold-in-soil anomalism and high-grade gold mineralisation observed in drilling and rock chips.
The Company believes that these magnetic units are mapping out large gold mineralised shear zones. GTE expressed optimism that potential gold bearing structures can be identified and mapped using simple geophysical data, providing improved targeting with greater confidence. This will reduce the amount of drilling that is required to determine areas of economic interest.
Updates and next steps
The company announced that the better understanding of the gold mineralisation demonstrates the considerable exploration upside of the Yandal West gold project and provides clear targets which can be tested economically.
The company said that the next round of drilling will commence next month. GTE said that the Harris Find Shear Zone within the May Queen prospect area is a high priority target, with potential for a significant discovery along its strike in either direction.
The company said that it is currently well advanced in a closely spaced ground magnetic survey trial at the Ives Find prospect to see whether it can achieve a high enough resolution to be used to help map the prospect in detail.
The company said that the drilling is planned at Ives Find to continue to test the high-grade lodes that remain open once this survey is completed.
