Six years after it first spotted the Toora West IP anomaly, and just a year since aircore drilling below the 30m of cover to make its discovery, the explorer is still grappling with the geology at the copper-molybdenum porphyry prospect.
Its follow-up diamond drilling has just delivered a welcome surprise: high-grade gold.
Hole five returned two mineralised zones: 0.6m at 4.27 grams per tonne gold, 0.31% copper, 2.6gpt silver and 130 parts per million molybdenum from 274m, over an even better 0.6m at 8.72gpt gold, 1.85% copper, 5.2gpt silver and 151ppm molybdenum from 287m.
The company said the gold results appear to be associated with a copper sulphide mineral, tetrahedrite, reflecting a late, cooler temperature overprint on the earlier copper-molybdenum mineralisation.
Hole seven, drilled to the north, intersected an interval of shallow silver assayed at 16m at 16gpt from 52m, including 1m at 150gp, over 27m at 0.14% copper from 268m, 2m at 0.24% copper, 0.19gpt gold, 1.8gpt silver and 103ppm molybdenum, and two deeper 1m intercepts of molybdenum grading up to 0.19% at 477m and 495m.
The northern-most hole returned 27m at 0.15% copper from 112m, with hole six terminated by a fault, but the rocks suggest it has clipped the top of the Toora West porphyry system.
Stavely’s recent done survey identified a porphyry target just north of the hole, a magnetic high, surrounded by a magnetic low coincident with alteration noted in aircore drilling, with assays pending.
The company said that was now a priority target for diamond drilling as soon as possible.
Stavely executive chair Chris Cairns said while exploration at Toora West was still at the reconnaissance stage it was exciting, providing clues that should allow it to vector toward the main porphyry.
Toora West is 15km north-west of Thursday’s Gossan, where a resource for the 2019 Cayley Lode discovery is being prepared.
A scoping study will follow.
Stavely says it is undertaking the most comprehensive exploration of the Stavely Volcanic Arc since the 1970s, with 19 regional targets in its sights, most of which are completely untested by “industry top dogs” such as Newcrest Mining, Rio Tinto, CRA Exploration and North in past decades.
It now controls about 1500sq.km covers 115km of prospective volcanics, most of which are under cover.
It claims an 80% discovery success rate from drilling four of five blind prospects.
