Aruma Resources Ltd (ASX:AAJ) has started a targeted diamond drilling program at the Salmon Gums Gold Project, designed to follow up and extend last year’s bonanza-grade gold intercept that included gold grades as high as 224 g/t.
Salmon Gums, in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, is a high-grade gold exploration project 30 kilometres south and along strike, and in the same stratigraphy, of Pantoro Ltd (ASX:PNR)’s high-grade Scotia Gold Project. Aruma is exploring its potential to host high-grade Norseman-style gold mineralisation.
Aruma’s 2022 drilling program at Salmon Gums intersected bonanza gold grades including 5 metres at 50.2 g/t gold, with grades as high as 224 g/t.
This was followed by a diamond core drilling program late last year that returned anomalous zones of gold and expanded the interpreted greenstone footprint at the project to more than 75 square kilometres.
A 44-hole RC drilling program and shallow auger drilling program were then completed earlier this year with results extending the gold mineralised footprint at Salmon Gums, and confirming its potential to host significant Norseman-style greenstone gold mineralisation.
Diamond drilling now underway
Aruma says the current program will consist of seven diamond core holes to follow up the previous intercept of five metres at 50.2 g/t gold, utilising different orientations to fully understand the mineralisation orientation and controls.
The program will see the high-grade intersection twinned and drilled back across section, with multiple holes to be drilled from each drill pad. An additional hole is also planned to be drilled north to south to test for flat lodes typical of Norseman-style mineralisation.
Drilling is expected to be completed this month. The drill core will be sent for processing, logging and sampling, and laboratory results will be released when available.
The diamond drilling results will help plan future extensional drilling around this exceptionally high-grade gold zone.