Navarre Minerals Limited advised that two diamond drill rigs have started core drilling on the prolific Nelson Line within the wholly owned St Arnaud Gold Project, 240 kilometres northwest of Melbourne. The inaugural 4,000-metre drilling program will scope the shallow gold potential that remains open beneath the old Comstock open pit. The diamond drilling follows completion of a 5,000-metre diamond core drilling campaign on the adjacent New Bendigo Line. Although results for the last five holes of the campaign remain pending, the New Bendigo drilling has already delivered a standout intercept of one metre at 15.6 grams per tonne of gold from 153.7 metres, including 0.4 metres at 38.3 g/t gold. Core samples generated from the Nelson Line drilling will be submitted for assay progressively following completion of geological logging, with results released as they come to hand. Navarre is well positioned with a landholding of more than 1,600 square kilometres across the broader St Arnaud Gold Project. Following a well-supported $14.9 million capital raising, by way of a placement and share purchase plan, the Company is well placed to fund ongoing exploration with a June-end cash balance of $14.1 million. Alluvial gold was first discovered at St Arnaud in 1855 and was quickly traced to its source in outcropping quartz reefs. By 1860, 47 hard rock mines were in operation. From 1855 to 1916, approximately 400,000 ounces of gold were produced at a recovered grade of over 15 grams per tonne of gold from the hard rock mines. The St Arnaud Goldfield consists of several lines of reefs which were worked to the southern edge of the younger Murray Basin cover. These reef trends are known as the New Bendigo (Bristol), New Chum and Nelson lines. The Nelson Line produced the most gold and was worked over a strike extent of approximately five kilometres to a maximum depth of 685 metres in the goldfields deepest mine, the Lord Nelson Mine. The Lord Nelson Mine was the only mine to produce gold from sulphide ores below a depth of 200m, with records showing a total of 323,000 recovered ounces (80% of total goldfield production). Most other mines closed on reaching the water table because the technology was not available to economically treat the sulphide ores in addition to the added cost of pumping mine water. The Lord Nelson Mine demonstrates the prospectivity of the area in terms of vertical continuity of auriferous reef systems. Ten steep, west-dipping quartz reefs of up to 7.5 metres in width were worked between 1864 and 1916. Historically, silver was a common occurrence with gold mineralisation in the St Arnaud Goldfield. In 2018, Navarre's maiden reconnaissance drilling program demonstrated the potential for economic mineralisation of the St Arnaud Goldfield to extend under shallow Murray Basin cover more than 5 kilometres beyond the limits of historic workings. This mineralisation remains open along strike and will be subject to follow-up drilling. The best gold result was 4 metres at 6.6 grams per tonne gold from 48m (SAC022) and the best silver result was 1 metre at 67.4 g/t silver from 50m (SAC055).