Highlights

  • Augustus Minerals restarts RC drilling at Music Well after station tracks dried out following 228 millimetres of August–September rainfall.
  • Five holes drilled so far, including three reoriented holes at Clifton East based on structural data from an earlier diamond hole.
  • Assays from the five completed holes are expected shortly; one further RC hole remains at Clifton East before the rig moves.
  • St Patrick's Well is next: surface rock chips there returned up to 30.4 g/t gold over 600 metres of strike before any drilling.

Rain and drilling rigs don't mix well in the Leonora-Laverton greenstone belt. Augustus Minerals (ASX:AUG) has been navigating that problem at its Music Well Gold Project, where 228 millimetres of rainfall across August and September halted operations twice. With station tracks dry again, drilling has resumed — and the target that comes after Clifton East is the one the company has been itching to test.

Back to Work at Clifton East

The current programme started this run on 26 September, only to be stopped again by heavy overnight rain shortly after. With conditions now passable, drilling has resumed on the 1,242-square-kilometre Music Well tenure, about 35 kilometres north of Leonora. Exploration general manager Andrew Ford explained that 228 millimetres on unformed station tracks made moving heavy vehicles impossible.

Five holes have been completed in this programme. Three of them — MWRC0025 to MWRC0027 — were drilled at Clifton East towards the northwest, the opposite direction to earlier holes. That reorientation followed structural measurements from diamond hole MWD0001, which indicated that some veins dip steeply to the southeast. Drilling across a vein system's dip rather than along it gives a better geometric test of the mineralisation. Whether that approach improves on previous Clifton East results depends on the pending assay batch. One further Clifton East hole remains before the rig relocates.

St Patrick's Well on Deck

The next five holes will be the first effective drilling at St Patrick's Well, a target that has been flagged for some time based on compelling surface evidence. Rock chip sampling there has returned high-grade gold over approximately 600 metres of strike, including samples of 30.4 g/t (ARK0063), 21.7 g/t (ARK0141) and 20.4 g/t gold (ARK0061). Augustus says St Patrick's Well sits alongside the same major shear zone that hosts Clifton East mineralisation and also hosts the Celtic gold mine, located west of its tenure.

Rock chips are selective surface samples — they define a target but say nothing about the grade, width or continuity of any mineralisation at depth. Ford described putting first holes into St Patrick's Well as 'particularly exciting'. The company has provided neither hole depths nor programme metres for the remaining work.

Context: Music Well and the Broader Greenstone Belt

Music Well covers ground in the Leonora-Laverton greenstone belt, a productive gold district. The company also holds interests in Papua New Guinea, but Music Well is the current focus of its field programme. The significance of both the Clifton East reoriented holes and the St Patrick's Well debut will only be clear once laboratory results are received and the geological interpretation is updated. Further weather disruption remains a risk while the programme continues on unformed tracks.