A maiden 2250m reverse circulation (RC) drilling program has commenced at the Xanadu gold project Hermes prospect, gold miner Platina has announced.
Located 45km south of Paraburdoo in Western Australia’s Ashburton Basin, Hermes shares a similar mineralisation style and is situated on the same fault structure that hosts the nearby 1.4 million ounce Mt Olympus gold deposit.
The drilling program follows a historical data review and rock chip sampling programs earlier this year at which discovered the similarity.
The Hermes prospect has a one kilometre strike length and is open in both directions, located centrally within the 565km2 Xanadu tenement package.
The bulk of the mineralisation at Hermes occurs in a central corridor which comprises multiple parallel zones observed in outcrop from 10m up to 20m wide.
Multiple parallel sets of these zones form a much broader mineralised corridor which has an overall width of 80m and trends west-northwest over one kilometre strike.
Platina managing director Corey Nolan said the first phase of the RC drilling program was targeting a 600m core section within this mineralised corridor.
“We’re excited to have started drilling Hermes as geological mapping, rock chip sampling and geophysics have defined a prominent mineralised structure which previously returned rock chip assays up to 4.22g/t gold,” he said.
“Notably, the orientation of the mineralisation was revealed to be parallel to the west-north-west trending Howie’s Hole fault, located 500m to the north, which also runs in the vicinity of the Mt Olympus and Zeus gold deposits.
“The mineralised zones were mapped to be closely associated with conglomerate lenses which correlate with the Mt Olympus deposit style of mineralisation.”
Additionally, cultural heritage clearances have also been finalised for the upcoming Xanadu Deeps diamond drilling programs and the Xanadu West RC, which is planned to commence in late 2023.
