Gateway high-grade hits trigger widening WA gold potential

Gateway Mining has strengthened the case for a district-scale gold discovery at its flagship 1780-square-kilometre Yandal gold project in Western Australia after reporting a string of high-grade first-pass intercepts from southern structural corridors, a whopping 20 kilometres south of previous drilling at its Mustang prospect.

With mineralisation now emerging across a much broader footprint, the company is preparing to ramp up reverse circulation (RC) drilling in a bid to rapidly grow its existing gold resource.

Operating along ultra-wide reconnaissance lines spaced one kilometre apart, the initial aircore passes slammed into significant gold mineralisation across areas that had never been effectively drill-tested before.

Standout hits from the newly defined Celia South prospect included one hole that returned 10 metres grading 2.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 66m, featuring a 2-metre slice at a hefty 9.2g/t gold.

Another hole clocked 12m running 1.4g/t gold from 60m, including a higher-grade core of 4m at 3.5g/t gold, whilst a further hole intercepted 16m at 1g/t gold from 104m depth.

Meanwhile, along the parallel Great Western Shear Corridor, 3km west of Celia South, first-pass lines at the Panikin prospect revealed a continuous 3-kilometre mineralised trend. This zone was headlined by one hole that nailed 4 metres grading 2.7g/t gold within a broader 12-metre hit running 1.1g/t gold from 88 metres.

Notably, this result falls within the southern extension of the rock sequence, where much of Gateway’s ongoing Great Western drilling is taking place, hinting that there may be plenty more good news on the way. The first batch of assay results is expected shortly.

Along with assays from the latest drilling, a suite of results remains pending from the company’s top-priority Great Western Flexure Zone. The target, which has previously yielded a swathe of gold nuggets at surface, lies along trend roughly 15 kilometres north of Panikin.

Gateway Mining chief executive officer Richard Pugh said: “Ongoing aircore results continue to confirm that our flagship Yandal project is host to a very large gold system. These new results at Celia South and Panikin build on the exciting gold discoveries that we have announced over the past several months.”

The immediate success of the program was born of Gateway’s systematic resampling of 366 historic drill holes. Geochemical profiling revealed previous operators had completely missed the mark, failing to drill the exact mafic-intermediate contact that controls the high-grade gold at Northern Star Resources’ near