Augustus Minerals has resumed reverse circulation drilling at its Music Well gold project in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields after unseasonably heavy rains forced a temporary halt, with the rig set to move next to the high-priority St Patrick's Well prospect.
The company said it will complete one final RC hole at its Clifton East prospect before shifting to St Patrick's Well, where previous rock-chip sampling along a 600-metre mineralised trend returned gold grades of 30.4 grams per tonne, 21.7 g/t and 20.4 g/t. Augustus plans to sink five maiden RC holes into the largely untested prospect to test whether those surface grades extend at depth.
At Clifton East, the latest drilling follows a new geological interpretation after structural data from an earlier diamond hole indicated some gold-bearing veins dipped steeply to the southeast. The company rotated the orientation of its latest holes by 180 degrees, drilling towards the northwest.
Assays from five holes already completed in the current program are pending, which management says could provide fresh clues to the orientation and continuity of the gold-bearing structures.
"The sun is now out, and the ground has dried up. Getting the rig drilling again is great news and putting the first effective holes into the highly prospective St Patrick's Well prospect is particularly exciting," Augustus general manager exploration Andrew Ford said.
The Music Well project covers 1242 square kilometres about 35 kilometres north of Leonora, in a district that hosts Northern Star's Darlot and Thunderbox mines and Genesis Minerals' Leonora gold camp. The renewed activity comes as the State Government's latest exploration incentive scheme provides more than $6.16 million to support 40 projects across the region.