White Rock Minerals Limited (ASX: WRM; OTCQX:WRMCF), (‘White Rock’ or ‘the Company’) is pleased to provide an update on its underground drilling program targeting the Gap Zone at the Morning Star Underground Gold Mine in northeast Victoria.

Highlights

• Drill hole 22GZL9013 has returned 0.4 metres at 621g/t gold (20 ounces per tonne of gold) from a quartz reef interval with abundant visible gold previously reported from the Gap Zone1 at the Morning Star Underground Gold Mine, Victoria.

• This confirms White Rock’s priority of targeting high-grade gold for drill testing in the Gap Zone.
• This result is from the first significant hole drilled by White Rock into the host dyke body. Earlier drilling, at the very northern margin of the host dyke, revealed at least ten quartz reef structures.
• The Gap Zone represents an area with 200 metres of vertical extent between areas of historic mining that occurred above 10-level (>500,000 ounces) and below 14-level (>300,000 ounces), with historic production2 of 883,000oz gold at 26.5g/t.

Diamond drilling of the Gap Zone recently recommenced after the earlier drilling focus on the near-term gold production potential of new mining areas at Dickenson3, Stacpoole4 and Whitelaw North5. The success of that drilling has now provided the impetus for the Company to commence the necessary pre-production development ahead of the scheduled recommencement of gold production in Q3 2022.

White Rock modified the Gap Zone drill program to provide a broad first pass assessment at nominal 40m centres to better understand Gap Zone’s potential to host significant mineralised quartz reefs (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Morning Star underground gold mine long section looking west, showing the current interpretation of multiple quartz reefs and associated alteration halos in yellow, historic interpretation of the host dyke in pale green, development in blue and drill hole traces in black. The Clarke “A” Floor Reef is highlighted in red, together with drill result highlights from recent assay results (true width).

Drilling to date has tested the most northern 150 metres of the known 600 metre strike extent of the prospective host dyke within the Gap Zone, with 13 diamond drill holes completed for 2,156 metres (21GZL9001 to 22GZL9013). This drilling identified at least ten quartz reef structures over the 200 metres of vertical depth at this very northern location within the dyke host.

White Rock will continue drilling south along 9 Level to test the entire 600 metres of strike length of the Gap Zone, over its full 200 metre depth interval, with a further 25 diamond drill holes for 5,600 metres planned to complete the first pass assessment.

Two significant highlights of drilling to date have been the early identification of at least ten quartz reef structures at the northern extremity of the Gap Zone and the intersection of abundant coarse visible gold1 (Figure 1) in drill hole 22GZL9013 that returned an assay of 0.4 metres at 621g/t gold (20 ounces per tonne of gold).

View the full announcement here.

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