Christmas drilling blitz for Marmota at South Australian gold play
- Andrew Todd
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
Marmota Limited (ASX: MEU) has wasted no time unleashing Stage 2 drilling at its explosive Greenewood gold prospect in South Australia’s Gawler Craton, with rigs already chewing fresh rock barely five weeks after its maiden program.
The company’s maiden program at Greenewood delivered some of the hottest near-surface hits seen in the region since the nearby Challenger mine dominated the Gawler region.
Marmota confirmed yesterday the follow-up reverse circulation (RC) campaign is now in full swing, targeting up to 8500 metres across as many as 85 holes before the Christmas break, in a deliberate blend of extensional and in-fill drilling designed to lock in the boundaries and deliver the data required for a maiden resource estimate.
The company says its extensive campaign is well on track to wrap up before seasonal shutdown and sets the stage for rapid news flow through December and assays into the new year.
Marmota’s first ever program at Greenewood was only completed weeks ago and has quickly moved the deposit to the top of the pile since fully acquiring the ground in June.
Stage 1 drilling produced thick, high-grade near-surface intercepts that lit up the market in October, with the standout holes including intercepts as high as a scorching 43 grams per tonne (g/t) gold over 4m from just 64m downhole. That hit lay within a beefier 28m section running 6.4g/t from 44m, alongside further thick zones of seriously impressive grades. Those further hits included 28m at 5.6g/t, a 16m section running 6.5g/t and 28m grading 2.1g/t, all within the top 60m from surface.
Critically, the upcoming 1-metre split assays from those wide composites are the next results in the queue, expected imminently.
Greenewood sits just 35km north-west of Marmota’s historic flagship Aurora Tank gold deposit and 30km north-east of the historic Challenger mine that produced 1.2 million ounces.
It forms a pivotal part of the company’s tightly held “Arc of Gold” that wraps around the prominent Y-shaped gravity feature in the north-western Gawler Craton — a structural corridor that now hosts every known unmined gold deposit in the trend, all controlled by Marmota.
Prior to Marmota taking the reins, there had only been 7000m of historical drilling at Greenewood and the company’s maiden program there has already transformed it from a forgotten prospect into one of the most exciting near-surface high-grade systems in the entire Craton.
Stage 2 is set to systematically step out and also tighten up the model of the mineralised footprint, with the clear objective of converting those bonanza-grade oxide intercepts into a second substantial gold resource in quick succession.
The company is expected to drop a maiden resource over Aurora Tank in the coming weeks and at the current rate of drilling, Marmota is charging hard toward a second resource definition outcome at Greenewood shortly thereafter.
In a gold environment where prices seem firmly fixed above $6000 an ounce, and with genuine near-surface, high-grade ounces increasingly rare, Marmota’s Gawler portfolio is rapidly shaping up as possibly the most compelling undeveloped gold plays in South Australia.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: office@bullsnbears.com.au
