Shree Minerals Ltd has extended its gold ground in the highly prospective Lachlan Fold Belt of New South Wales, with a new exploration licence - Exploration Licence 9346 'Oak Hill'.
The tenement in the southern part of the belt covers the southwestern extension of a mineralised trend that contains two gold resources.
Previous soil geochemistry identified several gold anomalies within the tenement area, one of which coincides with the mineralised trend.
Reverse circulation (RC) drilling is expected to commence at Rock Lodge within the company's Lachlan Fold Belt Project this month.
Oak Hill tenement
Oak Hill tenement, covering around 25 square kilometres, is 20 kilometres northwest of Albury. The tenement abuts EL7544 on its eastern side that is held by Aureus Mining Ltd.
The Aureus website describes the Albury Gold Project as containing the Stoney Park and Elm Park gold prospects that have a combined JORC mineral resource of 154,000 ounces of gold:
➢ Stoney Park - 860,000 tonnes at 2.75 g/t gold for 72,000 ounces and 2.32 g/t silver for 61,000 ounces; and
➢ Elm Park - 2.31million tonnes at 1.43 g/t gold for 82,000 ounces and 1.01 g/t silver for 63,000 ounces.
Oak Hill covers Ordovician metasediments and phyllites that are intruded to the east by the Devonian Jindera Granite.
Gold mineralisation at Elm Park and Stoney Park is hosted by a northeast trending fault that is clearly visible in aeromagnetic images. The fault is possibly related to displacement on the contact between the granite and the sediments.
Exploration plans
Shree considers the extension of the anomalous soil geochemistry into EL9346 as a significant opportunity to discover economic gold mineralisation.
The company plans to initiate exploration by infill soil sampling and geological mapping of the target area along strike of the structure hosting the Stoney Park and Elm Park deposits.
Additional soil sampling surveys and mapping are planned to test other geochemical anomalies on the tenement.
Only 30% of the tenement has been soil sampled.
Rock Lodge drilling
About 15 RC holes are planned for about 1,000 metres of drilling to test induced polarisation (IP) chargeability anomalies and gold soil anomalies at the northern and southern target areas at Rock Lodge.
A suitable rig is expected to be mobilised to Rock Lodge over the coming days.
Historical exploration at Rock Lodge includes work done by Southern Gold NL with diamond drilling in 1985.
The holes intersected up to 8 metres of massive sulphide with recorded grades up to 4.28 g/t gold, 35 g/t silver, 0.79% copper and 13.5% zinc, with 12 metres at 1.2 g/t gold, 9.8 g/t silver and 0.2% copper.
Six RC holes were also drilled underneath old workings at Rock Lodge by Alt Resources in 2018.
This drilling also intercepted massive sulphides in four holes. Significant drilling intercepts included:
➢ 3 metres at 2.1 g/t gold, 3.7 g/t silver and 174 g/t bismuth from 17 metres and 2 metres at 2.7 g/t gold, 11.8 g/t silver, 300 g/t bismuth and 0.48% copper from 62 metres;
➢ 1-metre at 5.4 g/t gold, 55.6 g/t silver, 212 g/t bismuth and 0.11% zinc; and
➢ 2 metres at 1.6 g/t gold, 9.5 g/t silver, 903 g/t bismuth from 19 metres, 1-metre at 1.4 g/t gold, 375 g/t silver, 163 g/t bismuth, 1.6% lead from 23 metres and 1-metre at 4.8 g/t gold, 0.48% lead, 1.46% zinc from 57 metres.