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Baby luck for Chalice

newborn and a nickel sulphide dis- interest to grow around Julimar.
A covery in close succession made for “I suspect there are very few compa-
a wild ride for Chalice Gold Mines Ltd nies that have ground in that area, but
managing director Alex Dorsch in March. the ones that do might be looking a bit
Paydirt dared to ask which one brought more closely to see whether any EM
most joy and as rare as nickel sulphide geophysics have been done and things
discoveries are, Dorsch beamed much like that to see if there is any history of
brighter when speaking of the birth of his nickel exploration,” Dorsch said.
second child. Given that Julimar is an hour drive from
The first drill hole at Julimar, 70km Perth’s CBD, it is fair to assume that pre-
north-east of Perth, was the icing on the vious explorers have had at crack at the
cake for Dorsch. prospect.
Chalice’s intersection of 19m @ 2.59% However, as Dorsch explains, identi-
nickel, 1.04% copper, 8.37 g/t palladium fying the prospectivity at Julimar is not Alex Dorsch
and 1.11 g/t platinum from 48m in fresh easy.
rock, including a massive sulphide zone “A lot of the intrusion there is cov-
of 13m @ 3.15% nickel, 1.19% copper, ered with transported cover. The survey “If you look at the supply side of Class
8.85 g/t palladium and 1.09 g/t platinum, doesn’t have it mapped as an outcrop- 1 nickel, you see a very empty pipeline
was well received in the market. ping ultramafic or mafic rocks, so from of undeveloped projects, so I guess the
The stunning first strike meant expec- that perspective it was overlooked for a sector is needing to go into the green-
tations were high for the follow-up act. little while. We grew more and more ex- fields space to satisfy that existing de-
Preliminary results released by Chal- cited by it as we saw there was such little mand. If there is any material increase in
ice from the second hole, 900m away, work done,” he said. demand, then the cupboard is going to
indicated no massive sulphides struck “What we liked about it is that there be bare very quickly.”
and XRF testing hadn’t detected any sig- is quite a long magnetic feature along a Chalice is one of the lucky juniors in
nificant nickel or copper mineralisation. prospective boundary of the Yilgarn Cra- play currently with a treasury of cash and
Nevertheless, the company sees po- ton. There is a potential source for these investments totalling $25 million and two
tential for additional zones of mineralisa- mineralised fluids to come up. It certainly emerging projects in Julimar and Karri at
tion at Julimar. ticked all the right boxes technically but Pyramid Hill.
“The second hole was targeting an en- was still very much a conceptual play.” Pyramid Hill is close to Melbourne,
tirely separate target and as such does At the time of print, Chalice had the Victoria, and is being diamond drilled by
not detract from our recent discovery,” ability to continue drilling at Julimar in a local outfit.
Dorsch said. the Avon Valley, a sub-region of Western Dorsch is keen to continue drilling for
Chalice hasn’t contained its excitement Australia’s Wheatbelt, as Chalice looks to as long as permitted.
to Julimar and has expanded its hold- capitalise on the discovery momentum. “It is our intent to keep those drill pro-
ing with another 18 licence applications “Since I joined Chalice, we have been grammes at Julimar and Pyramid Hill
“over anything that looks quite interesting looking at nickel pretty closely and we going and we are still very excited by
in the vicinity”, Dorsch told Paydirt. have consistently found it very hard the things that we are drilling in Victo-
Magnetics and gravity surveys will be to come across advanced exploration ria where we have completed a couple
applied by Chalice, as Dorsch expects stage opportunities,” Dorsch said. of diamond holes on the Karri prospect,”
Dorsch said.
“Aircore results released recently are
very encouraging and we are starting to
see grades that are getting above the 10
g/t gold mark. We are seeing intersec-
tions like 1m @ 15 g/t within a sizable
4km-long continuous gold trend. Our dia-
mond programme is about 11 holes. We
are going to get that programme finished
and hopefully that will give us a good ge-
ological picture of what we are looking at
underneath that aircore anomaly.”
Chalice has made a promising start to
diamond drilling at Karri with first-ever
testing at depth striking 2.55m @ 2.29 g/t
gold within 11.45m @ 1.02 g/t from 284m
from the first hole.
– Mark Andrews

Chalice moved to peg more ground around Julimar, 70km from
Perth, after early nickel sulphide potential was discovered

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT MaY 2020 Page 19