The company’s fully-owned subsidiary Half Moon is the manager of the Golden Moon JV that was formed after it reached agreement with Coombedown over two tenements in the Gawler Craton region. The JV does not own the rights to any of the opals, palygorskite or iron ore that were previously dealt out to other third parties, however, Coombedown’s 10 per cent share will be free-carried up until a decision to mine.

As part of the drill program, several further holes will be drilled at Aurora Tank to assist with finalising the open pit design. Metallurgical testing is continuing on the deposit’s gold in a bid to optimise heap-leach recoveries.

The beauty of heap-leaching is that it may mean Marmota would not need to construct a processing mill or share revenue for having the ore toll-treated at a nearby facility – a great outcome for the company if achieved.

Marmota will also undertake its first follow-up program at its recently-discovered Goolagong prospect, where a hit of 2m at 0.64g/t gold from 36m was recorded. The air-core (AC) drill rig only reached 38m in that hole, with the drill bit unable to push through further … so what lies beneath could be interesting.

The company also owns 100 per cent of the Western Gawler Craton project containing two gold deposits – Typhoon and Monsoon – that feature total JORC resources of 33,000 gold ounces.

After the considerable effort expended by Marmota to form the JV for the promising Golden Moon deposits, it plans to leave no stone unturned in a mission to expand its gold inventory.

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