North Stawell Minerals Ltd (ASX:NSM) today announced encouraging results from diamond drilling at its Darlington Project, located six kilometres north of Stawell, Victoria. North Stawell Minerals is an Australian-based gold exploration company focused on exploring a 445 square kilometre contiguous land package covering the gold-prospective corridor immediately north of Stawell Gold Mines’ multi-million-ounce operation. The latest hole, NSD063, returned a narrow gold intercept of 0.5 metres at 1.16 grams per tonne gold from 129.6 metres, accompanied by strong arsenic results. This intercept is positioned 40 metres down-dip from previously reported high-grade drilling in NSD062, which yielded 0.4 metres at 17.1 g/t gold, and approximately 70 metres along strike to the north of NSD057, which intersected 2.3 metres at 29.18 g/t gold.
Hole NSD063 notably intersected the same brecciated vein texture observed in NSD062 and NSD057, supporting the interpretation of a steep, west-dipping vein system that remains open at depth. Executive Director Bill Reid commented that the result strengthens the geological, structural, and mineralisation similarities between Darlington and the historic high-grade Mariners Lodes at Stawell, which historically produced between 740,000 and 950,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 28-30 g/t gold. The company views the intersection of this structure with deeper, drill-confirmed basalt as a high-priority future drilling target.
Beyond the primary structure, North Stawell Minerals has identified three other parallel mineralised structures at Darlington, all of which remain open along strike and at depth. These include the historic Darlington Mine trend, with historical production of 2,347 ounces at 18 g/t gold, and the Darlington West area, which has returned encouraging intercepts on the margin of a previously undrilled basalt. The company maintains its focus on Darlington due to these compelling similarities to the multi-million-ounce Stawell deposit, seeing potential for a larger mineralisation system on the margins of the Darlington basalt at depth.
