Australian Gold and Copper Ltd (ASX:AGC) has the reverse circulation (RC) drill spinning at Hilltop prospect within the South Cobar Project in Central NSW as the maiden drilling program targets a new Cobar-style gold-copper discovery.
Seven to 10 RC holes are planned in the maiden Hilltop campaign which is underway and AGC expects to complete 1,500-2,000 metres in the initial phase.
Testing IP anomaly
Drilling, which is expected to take two to three weeks to complete, will test a large induced polarisation (IP) chargeability anomaly that has been defined over a 700-metre length and is open below 300 metres depth.
Above the anomaly are multiple gold-bearing gossanous outcrops (weathered sulphides) that extend over 500 metres in length, with 109 rock chips sampled to date including gold values up to 6.6 g/t.
Strong samples
A total of 109 rock chips have been sampled to date with 44 of these samples returning gold values above 0.5 g/t and 16 exceeding 2.0 g/t up to 6.6 g/t.
New rock chip samples up to 5.8 g/t gold and 142 g/t silver have extended the known mineralisation north by another 70 metres.
The northern zone also has the most consistently high silver in rock chips and lead in soils recorded to date at Hilltop.
Hilltop rock chip sample with 0.8 g/t gold taken from outcropping rhyolite breccia (pink rock fragments) cemented by the dark-coloured ironstone derived from weathered sulphides.
Culmination of ground exploration
RC drilling marks the culmination of a significant ground exploration effort at Hilltop, which is an outcropping gold-silver-copper-lead-zinc target.
Ground exploration included reconnaissance mapping, soil and rock chip geochemical sampling and ground-based geophysics.
The extensive IP chargeability anomaly coupled with the gold results demonstrate the potential for Hilltop to host significant, near-surface Cobar-style gold-base metal mineralisation.
Forward plan
Looking ahead, an ambitious exploration and drilling schedule is being planned for 2024 with this program designed to underpin major gold business growth.
Following the activities at Hilltop, the exploration rig is scheduled to move to the Achilles South target.
AGC is searching for high-grade Cobar-style gold-copper deposits in the resource-rich Cobar Basin.
About Cobar-style deposits
A Cobar-style deposit typically has multiple narrow lenses of mineralisation spread over a footprint 300 to 600 metres in length and can be extremely depth extensive, eg 1 to 2 kilometres in depth.
The deposits can contain any combination of gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc mineralisation, with variability both spatially and in grade profile (David 2006).
Deposit genesis is a spectrum ranging from volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) deposits through to structurally remobilised shear-hosted deposits.
For example, the CSA copper-silver deposit has been mined from four clusters of mineralised lenses up to 200 metres in length, up to 20 metres in width and collectively are now known to almost 2,500 metres in depth. Various portions of this deposit also contain appreciable zones of gold, lead and zinc (McQueen 2006).