Mt Malcolm ready to crack open the Emu Egg as review highlights rich potential of drill-ready gold prospect

Mt Malcolm Mines has confirmed its Emu Egg gold and base metals prospect is ready to drill, leveraging off thousands of metres of historic drilling into the mature but underexplored gold field.

Mt Malcolm (ASX:M2M) is approaching an important inflection point as it embarks on drilling campaigns at its flagship Calypso and Dumbartons projects this month that aim to define important JORC gold ounces to the bottom line.  Recent corporate activity such as Genesis Minerals’ takeover of Dacian Gold and merger talks with St Barbara and RED5 have shone a light on the century-old gold rush community as these players jostle with each other to secure ore to feed their hungry mills. Mt Malcolm is in the box seat to play into this consolidation.

At Emu Egg’s Main Zone a review of historic activity shows M2M boasts 2500m of strike, 5-6km from the Pig Well Mining Centre which produced 16,000oz of high grade gold up to 1973.

Numerous historic workings, costeans and abandoned shafts with no available records sit on the Emu Egg prospect area, and combined with an impressive list of historic, unfollowed-up drill results demonstrate a rich gold endowment.

After a comprehensive review M2M has identified 3297 soil sample data points that uncovered numerous greater than 20ppb targets as well as key to defining a second to none gold in soil anomaly at Emu Egg Main Zone. Documentation and plotting of 391 historical aircore, RAB and RC drillholes reveals 16,580 metres of effective drill testing comprising a considerable number of significant intercepts.

Assays peaked at 12m at 2.23g/t from 26-38m in bm_RC34 and 14m at 1.59g/t from 8-22m in bm_RC32 on 2m composite samples based on the weighted average of two independent lab results.

Other notable hits included 8m at 3.61g/t from 46-54m in RAB hole BRRB101 lying 150m to the south of the Emu Egg RC drill pattern. The mineralised halo of 30m at 1.35g/t extends from 30m to the end of hole at 60m.

This intercept presents as an opportunity to hit gold along strike and at depth from the main Emu Egg area. Drill targets within Emu Egg and Emu Egg Main Zone include 4m at 1.89g/t from 30-34m and 6m at 0.9g/t from 18-24m, complemented by numerous shallow +1g/t down hole intercepts.

The projected strike extensions of these intercepts are relatively untested.

Target generation advanced

M2M says target generation is at an advanced stage, with strike extensions and historic drill results themselves presenting as target zones for drilling.

Some drilling has already been designed and is expected to commence shortly, with M2M planning to confirm pre-JORC intersections and test depth extensions to at 120m deep, with holes to be drilled in east and west orientations at less than 60 degrees.

Stretching across 22 prospecting licences, significant but low tenor RC drill intersection in the central zone ended in mineralisation at the bottom of the hole, while the southern seven tenements have been drill tested on only 11 drill lines and 40 holes.

Both where drilling has taken place and where it is vastly underexplored, the Emu Egg prospect area reveals there is plenty left on the table.

All over, the historical drilling is surprisingly shallow and incomplete considering the number of significant gold intercepts and surface anomalism that bucks the trend of most recently discovered major gold mines being blind or found undercover.

“Our Emu Egg Prospect Area presents as a first class exploration opportunity,” M2M managing director Trevor Dixon said.

“Extensive gold-in-soil geochemical anomalies are evident, with the Emu Egg Main Zone anomaly extending over some 2.5 strike kilometres containing a distinct 100ppb Au core covering approximately 450 strike metres.

“The central zone is complemented by numerous ore grade historical drill intersections.

“The Mt Malcolm team have developed a new geological model to drive the next phase of exploration where structural interpretation indicates potential shear zone duplexing within the prospect area.”

The project also bears base metals potential, with slithers of ultramafic rocks associated with a gabbroic intrusive returning anomalous results for copper, lead, zinc, chromium and nickel.

Only evaluated on one drill cross section, the gabbro/ultramafic contact located on the adjoining Sunday-Picnic prospect ground shapes as a drill target.

Base metal intersections include 2m at 2293ppm cobalt, 1m at 4820ppm chromium, 8m at 2826ppm nickel, 3m at 3729ppm Cr and 3m at 4538ppm Ni in shallow drilling in hole MCAC067.

This article was developed in collaboration with Mt Malcolm Mines, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

The post Mt Malcolm ready to crack open the Emu Egg as review highlights rich potential of drill-ready gold prospect appeared first on Stockhead.

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