Gateway lands new high-grade hard-rock gold discovery near Wiluna, WA

Gateway Mining has smashed out a spectacular hit in the first-ever fresh rock test of its recently discovered Cowza prospect, part of the company’s Yandal gold project 85km northeast of Wiluna in WA. The drill bit intersected a 41-metre zone of high-grade primary gold mineralisation, confirming it is onto a major new discovery.

The company’s first reverse circulation (RC) drilling of Cowza delivered the 41m intercept grading an impressive two grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 104m downhole depth, including a richer, high-grade 9-metre zone assaying a stellar 7.5g/t gold from 105m.

The result is a powerful validation of Gateway’s exploration model. The company’s previous systematic scout aircore drilling had defined a 4.5-kilometre-long stretch of continuous gold mineralisation in the shallower oxide zone, but this is the first time drilling has hammered deeper into the underlying fresh rock.

Notably, the discovery hole was plunged directly beneath a previous aircore intercept that returned 16m at 1.3g/t gold, including an 8-metre core at 1.9g/t gold. Management says the relationship between the shallow aircore hit in the interpreted oxidised saprolite zone and the deeper, high-grade primary mineralisation provides a clear exploration template for what might lie beneath numerous similar aircore results that remain untested along the 4.5km north-south trending structure.

A second RC hole, drilled 2km north of the headline hit, has also bolstered confidence in the system’s scale potential. While the hole missed the main target after being collared too far east, it still returned a broad 52m anomalous zone grading 0.3g/t gold from 44m.

Gateway says that result confirms the fresh rock system remains fertile and extends for at least another 2km to the north of the headline hole. The company says it’s already planning follow-up drilling to test the main structure a short distance west of the original hole to see if it can land on target the second time around.

Gateway Mining chief executive officer Richard Pugh said: “The first RC test of Cowza has delivered exactly the sort of result we were hoping this large-scale gold system was capable of producing. Today’s result is the first effective test of that interpretation in fresh rock – and 41 metres at 2.0g/t Au, including a coherent high-grade core of 9 metres at 7.5g/t Au – is an outstanding validation of the team’s targeting.”

The Cowza discovery is just one piece of a much larger jigsaw that Gateway is piecing together.