FIRST AU LIMITED First Au Limited announced an update to its diamond drilling and sampling currently underway at its Snowstorm Project, East Gippsland, Victoria. Eleven holes of the fourteen-hole program have been successfully drilled. The drill program occurred on Licences EL005505 and PL007319 at the Snowstorm Project located in the Swifts Creek Goldfields of Victoria.
The program focused on extending a mineralised envelope around results from earlier drilling1, including intersections of 3.1m @ 11.6 g/t Au (Drillhole SNDDH002)1, 1.5m @ 10.7 g/t Au from 65m (Drillhole SNDDH007)2 and 1.2m @ 8.5 g/t Au from 63m (Drillhole SNDDH001)2. The drilling of the first 3 holes (357 m of a 1525m drill program) was completed from the same pad and targeted the continuation of the earlier high-grade intersection of SNDH002, which also included a high-grade vein of 0.8m @ 33.3 g/t Au. The drilling has succeeded in showing mineralisation in all three holes, with high-grade gold assays up to 59.2 g/t Au hosted in sulphide mineralised breccia vein contained in a mineralised envelope comprising sericite altered sandstone and brecciated black shales, and an early mafic dyke which is also mineralised. Results and collar information is detailed in Table 1 and 2, with further details provide in Appendix 1. FAU's Geologists have identified from drilling and field mapping that gold mineralisation occurs as a series of folded link structures hosted in a NW-SE trending shear zones.
Ongoing drilling continues to target this zone along strike to the NW (Figure 1 and 3) and gold is evident in multiple lodes. Auriferous quartz veins are hosted by shear zones that crosscut the project area. The NW-SE striking lodes range from 0.5m to 5m wide comprising laminated shear veins and carbonaceous shales interpreted to be associated with the Bindian Age of gold mineralisation (410Ma).
Also evident, NE-SW lodes range from 0.3m to 1m wide comprising stylolitic, laminated to breccia quartz veins containing abundant Arsenopyrite (AsPy) and often containing visible Stibnite (Sb). The presence of arsenopyrite & stibnite, coupled with the orientation of brittle conjugate shear zones suggest that Snowstorm is a high-level, epizonal system, (in similar crustal levels to the Fosterville's Stibnite-Gold Mineralisation association). The current drilling program has demonstrated continuation of strong areas of mineralisation occur on the Snowstorm project lease (Figure 3).
An additional 8 holes have also been drilled to a total of 768 m (Figure 1 and Table 2), with assays results pending. Many of these holes demonstrate similar styles of quartz veining and sulphide mineralisation. The current program has approx.
400m of drilling remaining to complete which will focus on the NW extent of the drill area and is expected to finish in the middle of February 2022.
