Carnavale Resources Ltd (ASX:CAV) has started an “aggressive” reverse circulation (RC) drilling program at McTavish East prospect within the Kookynie Gold Project in Western Australia, following up on substantial high-grade gold shoots as it works to establish a quality gold resource.
This latest RC drilling program is following up on extensional high-grade gold results that included 6 metres grading 79.21 g/t gold from 97 metres, including 3 metres at 152 g/t, from previous RC drilling in fresh rock.
Initial RC drilling at McTavish East in January 2022 intersected high-grade gold mineralisation associated with strong quartz veining which is structurally controlled with a number of higher-grade plunging shoots emerging.
The most recent RC 1,550-metre drilling program, the results of which were reported in July, extended the defined high-grade gold mineralisation by a further 250 metres to the northeast and now defines a +700-metre-long zone, with mineralisation 150 metres deep. A further 1-kilometre strike of additional targets, as identified by aircore drilling, remains untested.
Results lead to aggressive campaign
Encouraged by these earlier results — the strongest encountered yet at McTavish East — and with a view to maximise the potential of this zone, Carnavale has commenced an aggressive program of infill and extensional RC drilling.
The current program, consisting of 25 holes over 5,000 metres of RC drilling, is targeting infill and down dip extensions of the high-grade plunging shoots at the McTavish East prospect.
This substantial 5,000-metre RC program is designed to infill the known high-grade mineralisation at the prospect on a 20 by 20-metre pattern, as resource definition drilling, and chase the high-grade mineralisation down dip and along strike.
Carnavale CEO Humphrey Hale said: “The recent outlining of substantial high-grade gold shoots has been a great discovery for CAV at Kookynie. CAV has successfully mobilised an RC rig to start an aggressive campaign of drilling within a month of announcing the exceptional RC drilling results in July.”
Hosting both past and current high-grade mines, the Kookynie-Leonora region is highly prospective. However, significant areas, mostly undercover, remained under-explored by modern methods.
Extensive historic gold mining occurred between 1895 and 1922 throughout the Kookynie area, including the Cosmopolitan mine that produced a total of more than 331,000 ounces of gold at 15 g/t.
Carnavale notes that the style, grade and scale of mineralisation at McTavish East shows growing similarities to the Cosmopolitan Gold Mine.
The company is aiming to establish a quality high-grade gold resource at the Kookynie Gold Project, of a similar size to the historic Cosmopolitan Mine, that can be trucked and processed at an existing third-party processing plant 63 kilometres away.
- by Meagan Evans