Miramar Resources Ltd (ASX:M2R) is exploring the potential for multiple, large gold deposits at its 80%-owned Gidji joint venture project in WA’s Eastern Goldfields.
The explorer has secured all results from its December 2021 aircore drilling campaign and assays have extended the gold footprint of its Marylebone East target to more than 2.5 kilometres in length.
Beyond Marlyebone, drilling at the Blackfriars footprint has uncovered what could be an Aphrodite-style porphyry unit that could hold great promise as a future gold deposit.
Finally, there’s plenty more to explore at the nearby Highway target, with boasts an untested, historical auger gold-arsenic anomalism that Miramar is actively exploring.
A trifecta at Gidji?
Miramar executive chair Allan Kelly said the most recent drill results, along with geological observations from the company’s current drill program, underscored the huge potential of the Gidji joint venture project.
“At Gidji, we now have analogues for not one, but two plus million-ounce gold deposits,” Kelly explained.
“The Blackfriars target seems to have the same geology and scale as the 1.6 million ounce Aphrodite deposit but, to date, we have only tested it with very wide-spaced aircore drilling,” he added.
“Given the size and tenor of the untested historical auger gold-arsenic anomalism at Highway, we are hoping we might have a trifecta at Gidji.”
December aircore drilling
Miramar’s December exploration campaign unearthed some promising results from the Marylebone and Blackfriars targets, including some of the best results returned from the project to date.
The final batch of assays included substantial results from three holes, including one at the far northern end of Marylebone East that intersected 4 metres at 1.54 g/t gold.
The Marylebone East target remains open to the northwest of this hole for at least another 500 metres, giving a total strike length of roughly 2.5 kilometres.
Turning the soil at Blackfriars and Highway
Meanwhile, Miramar’s aircore program at Blackfriars has identified an intermediate porphyritic unit between the Black Flag Beds, to the west, and the porphyritic basalt unit to the east.
One of the key components of Miramar’s exploration model at Gidji is identifying competent rock units sandwiched between less competent units, where the more competent rocks can act as a focus for gold mineralisation which is then trapped and/or offset by later faults.
Interestingly, this geological and structural relationship is observed at several major gold deposits, including Paddington and Mt Charlotte.
The newly recognised porphyry unit, observed in two drill sections so far, could be the equivalent of the porphyry that hosts the majority of the gold mineralisation at the 1.6-million-ounce Aphrodite gold deposit, which is also located at the contact between Black Flag sediments and a basalt unit.
The current aircore program is infilling the Blackfriars footprint and testing Miramar’s Highway target for the first time.
About Gidji
The Gidji project is located around 15 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie and in close proximity to a number of gold mining and processing operations.
Despite this, the project is underexplored thanks to an extensive layer of transported material over its most prospective geology.
Miramar purchased an 80% interest in a number of tenements along the Boorara Shear Zone as part of its October 2020 initial public offering and ASX listing.
Since then, it’s been actively exploring the project and discovered several new targets, including the Marylebone prospect, which has the same geological sequence as the nearby 4-million-ounce Paddington gold deposit.
