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Rowena Duckworth
Gateway Mining is about to plunge the drill bit into one of its most compelling new targets yet at the company’s Yandal gold project in Western Australia, with a large-scale maiden drilling campaign set to fire up in early March at the Great Western prospect.
Detailed lithological and structural mapping has confirmed what the company describes as a “textbook” gold setting, with a differentiated dolerite unit running along the western margin of the primary Great Western shear zone.
The unit displays textural zonation and chilled margins strikingly similar to dolerite-hosted deposits in the Eastern Goldfields, including Northern Star’s famed Jundee and the Junction deposit in the prolific St Ives gold camp.
We are very excited to begin unlocking thepotential within the Great Western corridor.
Gateway Mining executive chairman Andrew Bray
Gateway Mining executive chairman Andrew Bray said: “The mapping at Great Western has confirmed a textbook structural and lithological setting that is strikingly similar to some of the most significant dolerite-hosted gold camps in the Eastern Goldfields.”
Management believes that the elucidation of the shear zone in contact with a highly prospective dolerite, together with coherent gold-in-soil and nugget anomalism, all point to the possibility of a large gold system.
It is this sheared dolerite margin that will be the focus of an extensive part of the upcoming drilling, as it represents an optimal host for gold mineralisation due to the high competency contrast between different rock types.
Currently, the mapped dolerite unit spans an impressive 7km of outcrop. However, magnetic imagery indicates the unit likely extends for approximately 16km along strike – a mammoth corridor-scale feature that remains largely untested.
Significantly, gold-in-soil anomalies and nugget patches track the sheared eastern margin of the dolerite across the entire sampled length to date. The highest-tenor anomalies cluster along what the company has predictably dubbed the “Target Shear Zone,” – a structure that splays from the Horse Well Gold Camp at the Warmblood deposit before flexing north along the dolerite margin.
Structural mapping has also revealed multi-phase deformation, cross-cutting features and linking structures — geological ingredients that create dilation zones capable of channelling large volumes of hydrothermal fluids. In other words, the right plumbing network appears to be there.
To test the theory, Gateway has designed a two-pronged maiden drilling campaign deploying two aircore rigs and one RC rig. The aircore rigs will sweep across the gold-in-soil anomalies along the sheared dolerite–intermediate volcanic contact, while the RC rig will step in where outcrop prevents effective penetration.
Regional wide-spaced drilling will also probe textural zonation within the dolerite and assess splay structures diverging from the main shear zone, with additional drilling planned once northern soil assays are received.
Gateway’s Yandal project covers a stonking 1780 square kilometres of prime Yandal greenstones, 85km northeast of Wiluna and just 40km from Northern Star’s abounding multi-million-ounce Jundee operation.
The project already hosts an 8.17 million tonne resource grading 1.52 grams per tonne gold for 400,400 ounces across the company’s Horse Well and Dusk ’til Dawn deposits.
Gateway enters the Great Western drill program well-funded, holding $19.4 million in cash and $9.3 million in liquid ASX securities at the end of December.
Armed with 16km of strike in a nugget-rich shear corridor that carries all the structural hallmarks of WA’s best gold camps, Gateway now hands the story to the drill bit to see if geological promise translates into ounces.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
