Marmota boosts SA gold hunt with super-sized drilling blitz

Marmota has supercharged its stage three drilling campaign at the company’s Greenewood gold discovery in South Australia’s prolific Gawler Craton, adding another 5000 metres of reverse circulation (RC) drilling to bring the total program to a whopping 31,000m.

The company said it has already completed 26,000m of drilling in the now-expanded program, which is expected to wrap up in around two weeks. Most of the additional 5000m of drilling is targeting the more southerly Mainwood zone, which, when combined with the Greenewood zone, now extends over a total strike length of two kilometres.

Samples are already on their way to the lab for assaying, setting the stage for a significant stream of news.

The Greenewood-Mainwood prospect duo are part of Marmota’s Golden Moon joint venture, in which the company holds a 90 per cent interest through its subsidiary Half Moon Pty Ltd. They sit 35 kilometres northwest of the company’s fully-owned flagship Aurora Tank gold deposit and 30km northeast of the historical million-ounce-plus Challenger gold mine, currently on care and maintenance and owned by Barton Gold Holdings.

Marmota designed the drilling program to embrace four principal tasks. These aim primarily to extend Greenewood further north, if possible, and to extend it to the south, in the hope of linking it to the known historic Mainwood mineralisation. That mineralisation includes a handful of old drill holes assaying better than 5g/t gold over one-metre intervals, with a few more holes delivering between 1g/t and 5g/t gold across similarly sized intervals.

Positive results to either or both of those extension thrusts could significantly expand the gold resource. Further infill drilling will also meet the other two objectives of building the inventory and improving confidence in it, prior to modelling an indicated resource and a following scoping study.

The Gawler Craton itself remains a key focus for both explorers and government, with South Australia continuing to promote new discovery programs in the region through the rollout of its renewed PACE Minerals program. The State is investing $12.4 million over four years - from FY2027 to FY2030 - to co-fund early-stage mineral exploration and fast-track new finds.

Marmota’s aggressive drill-out comes as the broader Australian gold sector continues to perform strongly, with the market still rewarding explorers that can grow their ounces in established jurisdictions. It also helps that gold continues to trade in near-record territory, buoyed by ongoing safe-haven demand.

The company’s maiden drilling at Greenewood just over a year ago established it as a significant discovery. This latest campaign will be the first drilling committed to the Mainwood zone since 2018. The local Greenewood-Mainwood system was originally discovered by Tyranna Resources in 2016. Tyranna and its historical partners followed up with RC and diamond drilling campaigns through 2017 and 2018, before work on the tenements ceased.

The system was a blind discovery by Tyranna when it was following up old 2003 rotary air-blast (RAB) drilling anomalies. Greenwood quickly yielded the highest-grade results of their program, with a best run in one hole of one metre assaying 53 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from surface within a wider interval of 14m at 6g/t gold.

A second hole nailed a decent one-metre slice going 37g/t gold within a wider interval of 22m grading 4g/t gold, while a third hole nailed another 1-metre interval running 21g/t gold in a broader hit of 13m at 3.4g/t gold. To cap off those successes, a fourth hole bored through a 5-metre intercept assaying 10g/t gold, including 1m running a beefy 29g/t gold.

Back to the present, in just 13 months, Marmota has smashed out more than 50,000m of RC drilling at Greenewood, a testament to its confidence in the project. The work is all part of a broader push that saw the company kick off a maiden scoping study for its Gawler Gold project in November last year.

I am delighted with every aspect of our Greenewood program which has been yielding some of the best gold results in the Gawler Craton since the discovery of Challenger in 1995. We have now completed over 50,000m of RC drilling at Greenewood in 13 months... easily setting a new record number of metres drilled by Marmota in 1 year. That drilling is dramatically transforming the Greenewood gold discovery, noting that each stage of drilling so far has yielded outstanding gold grades.

With February’s $15 million capital raise under its belt, Marmota has the funds to continue pursuing its exploration goals aggressively. The original stage three program at Greenewood-Mainwood was designed for 20,000m across 220 holes; however, that has now ballooned to 31,000m distributed across an estimated 320 holes.

While the drilling is about to fall silent at Greenewood - at least for now - the next round of work is just beginning for the assay labs, with a massive 31,000m of drilling data to crunch. Marmota looks set to generate plenty of news in the coming months and with gold prices holding firm, and the strong scent of gold in the air across the combined prospect system, any exploration success could prove to be particularly timely.

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