Tri Origin drilling at Lewis Ponds

A drilling program designed to follow up previous intersections of a 20-metre-thick sequence of massive, disseminated and fragmental sulphides is under way at the Lewis Ponds project of Tri Origin Exploration (TSE), 200 km west of Sydney, Australia.

Holes TLPD-8 and TLPD-9 will be drilled to a vertical depth of about 350 metres to test the extent of the sequence, which carries an average grade of 3.77% zinc, 2.13% lead, 0.2% copper and 110 grams silver and 3.3 grams gold per tonne.

Tri Origin President Robert Valliant, who plans to fly to Australia at the end of this month to view the core, believes the completion of these holes could be the first step in outlining a significant tonnage at Lewis Ponds. “By the time we finish this project, we’ll have some grade and tonnage figures,” he says.

Having raised $550,000 for the Australian exploration project through a private placement in late December, Tri Origin has enough funds to plug several more holes into the deposit. A concurrent program will examine the potential for other volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits on the surrounding 215-sq.-km property.

Once a reserve figure has been calculated, Tri Origin will try to option the property to a major company.

The 200-metre-wide sequence of altered and mineralized rocks that hosts the Lewis Ponds deposit has been traced for a strike length of more than 3.5 km. The regional volcanic sequence is made up of mafic and intermediate rocks overlain by felsic volcanics that host a number of sulphide occurrences. Sedimentary rocks overlie the felsics.

Tri Origin acquired the Lewis Ponds property after examining data provided by small-scale, turn-of-the-century mining, and exploration during the 1970s and early 1980s.