Howards Resource Area
The Howards deposit is located in the southern portion of the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt, 28km southeast of the historic Gidgee mill. The current MRE for the Howards deposit is 8.9 Mt @ 0.8 g/t Au for 230,500 oz. (refer to Horizon Gold Ltd ASX announcement dated 25 July 2022) (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Howards Deposit 3D view looking down to the north-west showing drill holes and MIK block model coloured by Au (g/t)
Gold mineralisation at Howards is hosted within a broad, north-south trending, vertical to steep west-dipping shear zone, approximately 150m from, and sub-parallel to the east-dipping eastern contact of the Montague granodiorite. Mineralisation is associated with strong quartz veining and intense silica-albite-biotite alteration within a sheared basalt above a footwall dolerite unit. Two sinistral northwest-trending faults offset the northern (northern lode) and southern (southern lode) extensions of the main Howards lode by 30m and 150m respectively (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Howards drill hole location plan with all recent primary intercepts >10 GxM labelled (i.e. average intercept Grade (g/t Au) multiplied by downhole intercept width in Metres).
RC drilling since the deposit was discovered in 1994 has confirmed the presence of broad zones of potentially open pit gold mineralisation that has now been defined over a continuous strike of +1.3km, with mineralisation remaining open to the north, south and at depth within the northern, southern and central lodes. Significant historic intercepts (>60 Au gram x metres) from the deposit include (Figure 2)*:
- 26m @ 14.3g/t Au from 23.0m (HWRC121)
- 24m @ 11.7g/t Au from 26.0m (HWRC044)
- 5m @ 22.6g/t Au from 110.0m (HWRC182)
- 46m @ 3.3g/t Au from 62.0m (HWRC086)
- 28m @ 2.6g/t Au from 30.0m (HWRC036)
- 43m @ 1.7g/t Au from 60.0m (HWDD178)
- 17m @ 3.9g/t Au from 18.0m (HWRC115)
- 50m @ 1.2g/t Au from 43.0m (HWRC179)
- 38m @ 1.6g/t Au from 38.0m (HWRC089)
*Refer to Horizon Gold Ltd ASX announcement dated 15 February 2021, “Gum Creek Geological Review”. CPs L.Ryan, M.Gunther, D.Archer.
Figure 3: Howards Deposit long section showing gold intercept gram x metre pierce points and interpreted plunging high-grade gold shoots (>60 Au gram x metre intercepts only labelled).
Drilling by Horizon Gold during 2021 (Figures 2 & 4) returned numerous >40 gram x metre gold intercepts from the central lode of the Howards Prospect including**:
- 77m @ 1.1g/t Au from 64m including 31m @ 1.8g/t Au from 75m (HWRC236)
- 65m @ 1.2g/t Au from 0m to EOH including 13m @ 2.5g/t Au from 22m and 7m @ 3.0g/t Au from 53m (HWRC240)
- 28m @ 1.5g/t Au from 102m including 11m @ 2.8g/t Au from 109m (HWRC242)
- 79m @ 0.9g/t Au from 18m including 35m @ 1.3g/t Au from 48m (HWRC238)
- 54m @ 0.8g/t Au from 65m including 13m @ 2.2g/t Au from 101m (HWRC254) and 3m @ 19.6g/t Au from 141m (HWRC248).
Other highly significant intercepts included 24m @ 0.8g/t Au from 78m including 8m @ 1.4g/t Au from 79m (HWRC250 – northern lode), and 14m @ 1.2g/t Au from 28m including 5m @ 2.7g/t Au from 30m (HSRC010 – southern lode) (Figure 2).
**Refer to Horizon Gold Ltd ASX announcement dated 30 August 2021, “Gum Creek Gold Project – Wide Zones of Shallow Gold Mineralisation from Initial RC drilling at Howards”. CP L.Ryan.
Exploration drilling will continue to target strike and depth extensions to existing mineralisation with the aim of increasing the current MRE.
Figure 4: Howards Deposit cross section (6960590N) showing mineralised envelope and significant intercepts.
Figure 5: Howards Prospect cross section (6960650N) showing mineralised envelope and recent intercepts >4 GxM.
Figure 5: Howards Prospect looking north
