HIGHLIGHTS
Brightstar’s Managing Director, Alex Rovira, commented “The assays returned from Fish confirm the high-grade nature of the resource, with consistent mineralisation over several metres providing support for conventional underground mine designs and stoping widths at shallow depths. With the current Jasper Hills drilling program ending within a week2, on-going geological interpretations are being completed ahead of resource upgrades across the Brightstar portfolio, with our field team mobilising to conduct a RC program at the Montague East Gold Project in Sandstone in a months’ time.
While drilling at Jasper Hills, we also took the opportunity to process two Cork Tree Well geotechnical holes for gold assays, with pleasing results being returned given the focus of these holes were for gaining geotechnical data for open pit mining. CTWGT015 and CTWGT016 were drilled at the northernmost (Delta) deposit at Cork Tree Well in January 2023, within an optimised $2,750/oz pit shell generated during our 2023 Scoping Study3 for the broader Laverton Gold Project. The geotechnical information is being utilised by our mining consultants ahead of re- optimisations and the associated new pit designs for our Definitive Feasibility Study presently underway.
We look forward to sharing ongoing results as they are received, with assays still pending from Second Fortune (surface and underground DD drilling), Lady Shenton RC (Menzies), Cork Tree Well DD (Laverton), and both RC and diamond programs at Jasper Hills generating valuable information for Mineral Resource Estimate updates and various technical aspects of the DFS”.
TECHNICAL DISCUSSION
The Fish deposit ceased open-pit mining operations in 2012, with Crescent Gold Ltd mining 350kt at 3.83g/t Au from a single open pit and processed through the Granny Smith Processing Plant. Geological units observed in the Fish pit have been identified as amphibolite and intermediate intrusives, with felsic dykes, BIF interflow units and quartz veins also present within the pit.
Mineralisation in mined-out material was mainly hosted in BIF, which generally strikes and dips at 030/80E in what was a largely a linear and predictable fashion. This unit is described regionally as an interflow sediment with siliceous and magnetite banding. The hydrothermal deposit is somewhat polymetallic with trace to minor sulphides including pyrite, pyrrhotite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, pentlandite, galena, sphalerite and bornite.
Beyond the RC holes identified within this release, Brightstar completed an additional diamond program totalling seven diamond tails drilled from RC drillhole pre-collars, and one diamond hole drilled from surface. Assays remain outstanding for these diamond holes, with core currently being processed for geotechnical and metallurgical purposes in conjunction with geological logging and analysis to provide valuable information for Definitive Feasibility Study and mine planning purposes.
The goals of the combined RC/DD program were to infill and confirm the resource within and adjacent to the Stage 1 underground mine design, to generate sufficient mass for metallurgical testwork, and to test for depth extensions to mineralised lodes.
Leave a Reply