The early work presaged what was soon to become a desirable feature of the mineralised zone at Aurora which is the prevalence of high near-surface grades, often within 20m to 50m from surface.

Marmota’s Aurora Tank discovery features remarkable gold intersections including multiple bonanza grades close to surface which exceed 100g/t gold over 1m, indicating excellent potential for low-cost, low capex open-pit heap leach gold production.

The best intercepts from the core of the Aurora zone highlighted to date include 217g/t gold from 103m, 197g/t gold from 57m, 120g/t gold from 18m, 105g/t gold from 33m and 93g/t gold from 28m.

The latest round of drilling is focussed mainly on the south-western extents of the mineralised zone defined so far, with a handful of other holes at the north-eastern end of the deposit.

The program follows hard on the heels of Marmota’s recent drilling at its new gold discovery at Goolagong, about 73km to the south-west of Aurora, where 16 holes were put down for a total of 1350m.

That program was designed to follow up a gold hit in a previous air-core hole at the southern extremity of the Goolagong ground which nailed a 2m intercept grading 0.6g/t gold from 36m to end of hole.

That hole was terminated at 38m due to hard ground beyond which the AC rig could not penetrate, leaving mineralisation open below that depth.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: [email protected]