Lucapa Diamond Company Limited and their partner Leopold Diamond Company Pty Ltd have provided an exploration update of the Brooking diamond project in Western Australia’s West Kimberley.
The project is located within 50 kilometres of the Ellendale mine which, until its recent closure, produced over 50 per cent of the world’s fancy yellow diamonds. The latest exploration program at Brooking involved drilling, micro-diamond analysis and an airborne geophysical survey. The recent drilling program was designed to follow up on the Little Spring Creek (LSC) lamproite discovery hole from which 119 micro- and macro-diamonds were recovered in January from a sample of drill core.
Photos of micro- and macro-diamonds that were recovered, courtesy of Lucapa
A total of 1,100 diamonds were recovered from the 178kg sample of core, including 18 macro-diamonds (classified as individual stones greater than 0.5mm in at least one dimension) and 1,082 micro-diamonds.
Lucapa’s Managing Director, Stephen Wetherall, said the latest micro-diamond results were some of the best that he has ever seen.
“To recover 1,100 micro- and macro diamonds from a 178kg sample from a single drill hole is remarkable,” he commented, “what’s more, we have also identified another 11 lamproite targets to explore at Brooking which were interpreted from the TDEM survey.”
“These exceptional results at Brooking underscore the prospectivity for diamond deposits in the Kimberley region of WA, which hosts the world-renowned deposits of Argyle and previously Ellendale. We look forward to the next phase of exploration at Brooking with great excitement,” Mr Wetherall stated.
The company has since finalised logging of the remaining seven holes drilled at LSC in a follow-up program. All holes intersected lamproitic material in the targeted body consistent with the dimensions of the ground penetrating radar survey (which was completed in May 2018).
Lucapa is now considering the options available in respect of trenching and bulk sampling to follow up on the remarkable micro-diamond results. In addition, Lucapa’s geological team is preparing Programs of Work and Heritage clearances for a new drilling program to test the 11 new lamproite targets that were identified from the TDEM survey as mentioned by Mr Wetherall.
More information on the Brooking diamond project can be found here.
