Talisman kicks off diamond drilling at Halloween
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Talisman Mining has commenced a program of follow-up diamond drilling at the company’s Halloween project, located in Western Australia.
The drilling program is designed to test for VMS mineralisation associated with encouraging high-grade gold intercepts the company recently encountered during maiden Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling at Halloween.
The RC drilling was completed in March with 16 holes providing the first definitive test of the Halloween project.
The project performed reasonably well with gold assay results returned from four holes along three out of four wide-spaced drill traverses.
Simplified geological plan with drill hole locations showing significant gold intercepts. Source: Company announcement
“The mineralised volcanics intersected in the RC drill holes also show pervasive magnetite development and strong manganese enrichment, together with elevated zinc-lead-silver geochemistry,” Talisman Mining said in its ASX announcement.
“These are key pathfinders which are potentially indicative of a VMS-related exhalative mineralising system.
“The gold intersections in three of the four drill traverses, along with the important geochemical support, are very encouraging and demonstrate the excellent VMS exploration potential at Halloween.”
The company has now designed two diamond drill holes to test the prospective mineralised horizon for VMS copper-gold mineralisation immediately down-dip from the peak gold results, which included:
– 9 metres at 3.80 grams per tonne gold from 84 metres, including 4 metres at 7.37 grams per tonne gold from 84 metres and 1 metre at 14 grams per tonne gold from 86 metres.
The drilling will also be used to set up a platform for further down-hole electromagnetic surveying in order to detect any potential conductive bodies beneath the current drilling.
Following the results achieved during the initial RC drill program, Talisman has recently completed a detailed Fixed Loop Electro-Magnetic (FLEM) survey over the prospective volcanic corridor at Halloween with the aim of defining conductors that might be associated with massive sulphides along strike and down-dip from the better RC gold drill results.
This FLEM survey has identified a late-time electro-magnetic conductor sitting along the prospective volcano-sedimentary corridor in the centre of the project, which will also be drill tested as part of the current diamond drilling campaign.