Alice Queen Ltd (ASX:AQX) has hit sulphides, mineralisation and visible gold during a diamond drilling campaign at its Horn Island gold property in Queensland’s Torres Strait.
So far, the explorer has completed two diamond drill holes covering around 700 metres while a third diamond core hole is underway at Horn Island’s first target area, known as Jedha 1.
Drilling at the target so far has intersected sulphide mineralisation within thin stringer stockwork veins, banded veining and breccia fill structures to a depth of roughly 400 metres and remains open.
And although they’re often non-material, small specs of visible gold have been observed within some of the sulphide-quartz veining.
Taking a step back, roughly 1 kilometre of northwest-striking, structurally controlled mineralised stockwork and veining that persists at depth is emerging at Horn Island.
Encouraged by visible gold
Commenting on the results, Alice Queen managing director Andrew Buxton said: These visible observations from our exploration team, led by our Queensland exploration manager Adrian Hell, are highly encouraging.
“While we know visible gold in the drill core may not always translate into high gold grades, we are very encouraged to be seeing it,” he explained.
“The current holes described in this announcement are close enough to the previous drilling at the SSR, that have yielded some great intercepts, and far enough away from our existing 500,000-ounce gold resource to make us believe that we have significant highly prospective strike extent still to test, and that our next hurdle of achieving one million ounces in resources is well within our reach.”
What’s next?
Because it’s reporting on visual mineralisation, the company has cautioned that visual estimates of sulphide material aren’t representative or substitute for lab analysis.
Ultimately, definitive assays are required to determine the grade and widths of the visible mineralisation reported during Alice Queen’s early geological logging.
Due to current industry staff shortages, drilling operations have been restricted to a single day shift only.
Nevertheless, AQX’s third diamond core hole, covering around 400 metres of ground, is expected to be completed within roughly a fortnight.
After that, samples from the bottom of the third hole will be air freighted to the laboratory for assay. It’s expected to return all gold assays from the first three holes (totalling roughly 1100 metres) within around four weeks.
A fourth diamond hole, again covering around 400 metres, has also been planned and will be greenlit to begin once all the lab results are in.