Venus jags 50g/t gold rock chips at historic WA gold mine

Venus Metals has picked up a plethora of seriously high-grade gold rock chips in and around historic workings in WA’s Goldfields region.

The headline grade is a whopping 50 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from the company’s Hilltop prospect, part of its wider Henderson gold project about 50km northwest of Menzies.

The series of rock chips grabbed from quartz-rich, old mined out rock piles, otherwise known as mullock heaps, produced multiple results grading higher than 20g/t gold.

The headline 50.1g/t rock chip was grabbed from a mullock heap along the historic northern workings that exhibits several open stopes and workings along a 125m strike length.

A further rock chip from the southern line of workings went over an ounce to the tonne gold at 36.9g/t gold with the southern line returning hits across a 50m strike.

The find confirms a previous reconnaissance sample that assayed at 77.2g/t, reported in 2021.

Management says the rock chip samples were sourced from the two parallel north-west trending lines of mullock heaps observed at Hilltop in addition to a series of open stopes observed nearby and from several shallow workings.

The company reported auriferous quartz or gold-bearing quartz vein reefs observed in several of the open stopes, indicating possible free-gold and showing a similar style of mineralisation to nearby high-grade gold deposits.

The assays from samples derived from the gold-bearing quartz reefs were also considered promising with several returning greater than 2g/t gold.

Hilltop was subject to historical mining that ceased in 1941 during World War II.

The historic mine and its related workings sit in the southern section of the Henderson project’s landholdings, which stretch across 438 square kilometres in the central part of the WA Yilgarn Craton.

They include the 25km strike length of the Mt Ida-Ularring greenstone belt known for its gold mineralisation.

There are two parallel north-west trending lines of workings with historic production coming from two shallow shafts at the centre of the southern line of old workings.

Official records show gold production ran for one year between 1940 and 1941, with total production of 200 tonnes of material at an impressive average grade of 22.4g/t for about 100 ounces of gold.

Venus says the mullock heaps next to the workings are generally quartz-rich with one location along the workings containing visible gold.

It says the majority of the quartz-rich mullock samples assayed returned more than 5g/t gold and are likely to be free-gold.

Recent exploration work at the site includes field mapping with a reverse-circulation drill program now planned to test the mineralisation at depth.

Venus considers the 28-sample rock chip program to be encouraging and plans to quickly follow up with the intended drilling.

The company is also progressing other gold targets on its Henderson tenements that were identified from a recent review of regional geochemical data.

Venus may be onto something worthwhile at Hilltop.

Its strategy of near mine riches left behind by the old-timers has played out well generally at other ASX-listed company projects in WA.

It is a nod to the old-time gold miners who were less than interested in gold going under about 15 grams per tonne – a company making proposition these days.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au