Kincora Copper (TSXV: KCC) has reported assay results from the first drill hole at its Trundle copper-gold project in Australia.

Drill hole TRDD001 intersected several significant intervals of gold and copper mineralisation from skarn zones within the southern portion of the property, which is situated in the Macquarie Arc of the Lachlan Fold belt in central-west New South Wales. Highlights included 51 metres grading 1.17 grams gold per tonne and 0.54% copper starting from 39 metres downhole.

The hole also intersected 20.5 metres grading 1.94 grams gold and 1.18% copper from 57.6 metres, including a high-grade core of 8 metres grading 3.07 grams gold and 1.95% copper, and 2.2 metres grading 4.32 grams gold and 2.43% copper from 75.9 metres downhole.

“We are extremely pleased and excited by the results of this first hole, it is not often you see such high grades near surface within a porphyry environment,” John Holliday, chair of the technical committee, and Peter Leaman, Senior VP of Exploration, said in a joint statement.

Drilling from deeper down TRDD001 intersected 18 metres grading 0.53 gram gold and 0.05% copper from 284 metres, including 3 metres grading 1.80 grams gold and 0.18%. The hole also intersected the targeted adjacent porphyry intrusion system, returning 21.1 metres grading 0.25 gram gold and 0.03% from 66 metres downhole.

The hole is part of a six-hole 3,800 metres drill campaign with assay results from the second drill hole, TRDD002, at the Mordialloc target, located about 8.5 km north of TRDD001, expected in the next couple of weeks, the company reports.

Visual interpretations from TRD002, Holliday and Leaman said, are “very encouraging.”

Both holes “support the skarn being a standalone target at depths and intervals often mined by both open cut and underground methods, but the high-grade zones within broader moderate mineralised zones are very importantly illustrating significant magmatic fluids associated with the adjacent porphyry intrusion system, which is a much larger target.”

The first two drill holes significantly expanded the scale and prospectivity of the Mordialloc porphyry and Trundle Park skarn-porphyry targets, the company says, and are interpreted to lie within the same mineralized complex as China Molybdenum’s Northparkes copper-gold project, Australia’s second-largest porphyry mine, about 30 km east of Trundle.

The third hole, TRDD003, is currently being drilled at Bayleys porphyry target, located approximately 1 km north-east of Mordialloc. For the fourth hole, the company plans to return to Trundle Park to follow-up on TRDD001.

The property has been extensively drilled in the past, with about 2,208 holes drilled over 61,146 metres, the company reports. However, about 92% of the holes were less than 50 metres deep and only 11 were deeper than 300 metres, which, the company believes, are too shallow given other major mines in the area.

At press time in Toronto, Kincora was trading at 15¢ per share within a 52-week trading range of 1¢ and 19.5¢.

The company has around 150 million common shares outstanding for a C$22.5-million market capitalization.

(Carl A. Williams – This article first appeared in The Northern Miner on July 06)