PRESS RELEASE
Windarra Minerals Ltd. (WRA.V) to Drill Mishi Leases Gold Targets
-3000 meters of drilling planned for high-priority targets less than 1 km along trend from Wesdome?s Mishi Pit resource and less than 3 km from Wesdome?s Magnacon mill
VANCOUVER February 9, 2011: Windarra Minerals Ltd. (the ?Company?) (TSX.V:WRA) is pleased to announce that drilling at its 100% owned Mishi Leases property will begin this week. The property is located approximately 50 km west of Wawa and is accessible by an all-weather road leading to Wesdome?s Mishi-Magnacon milling complex, which largely processes ore from Wesdome?s Eagle River mine.
Drill targets on the property are based on encouraging results returned in a 70 line-km grid-based Induced Polarization (IP), Magnetometer (Mag), and soil geochemical (1400 samples) survey completed by the Company in late September-November, 2010. Other targets were outlined in a compilation of previous work, which was undertaken largely in the 1980's and 1990's. These earlier programs, which also returned very encouraging results, included stripping, trenching, channel sampling (e.g., 3.93 g/t Au over 9.9 m, 32.9 g/t Au over 3 m, 18.5 g/t Au over 4.2 m, and 1.34 g/t Au over 10.2 m), and Diamond drilling (e.g., 13.8 g/t Au over 1.5 m, 7.36 g/t Au across 4 m, 5.1 g/t Au over 6 m, 4.8 g/t Au over 4 m, 6.8 g/t Au over 2.8 m, 7.38 g/t Au over 3 m, 7.36 g/t Au over 4 m, and 1.1 g/t over 32 m).
The previous results, which include both narrower high-grade intervals and broad lower-grade ?bulk-mineable? style intervals, were obtained from trenches and approximately 40 drillholes scattered along the length of the property. In addition to these excellent results, many broad intervals in drillholes and channel samples returned ?highly anomalous? gold-bearing values. It should also be noted that most of the drill intersections remain open along strike and/or down-dip, and that Diamond drilling was undertaken only to relatively shallow depths.
Wesdome?s Mishi Pit project
Windarra?s Mishi Leases property lies less than 1 km from Wesdome?s reinvigorated Mishi Open Pit project, which itself lies less than 2 km west of their Eagle River/Magnacon mill. Past mining at the Mishi Pit has yielded over 15,000 ounces of gold from over 135,000 tonnes of milled open pit ore, at a recovered grade of 3.57 g/t gold. In a News Release dated November 29, 2010, Wesdome announced the results of a positive prefeasibility study for the Mishi Pit project, which included a significant upgrade to their NI43-101 compliant resource estimate. The estimate included Measured and Indicated Resources totalling 5.7 million tonnes at 2.4 g/t Au, for a total of 438,000 contained ounces of gold in eight relatively shallow, easterly-plunging ore lenses (at a 1.0 g/t Au cut-off). Ninety percent of the resources are open-pittable, with planned open pits reaching depths of 110 metres. Additional Inferred Resources total 1.2 million tonnes at 3.6 g/t Au for another 140,000 contained ounces, and according to Wesdome, there is good potential to delineate further resources with additional drilling, as the deposit remains open both to depth and along strike. According to Wesdome, mineralization in the Mishi zone consists of disseminated pyrite in sericite-ankerite alteration zones within felsic host rocks, which are locally accompanied by smokey grey quartz veins and veinlets.
Mishi Leases Mineralization, Geology, and Exploration Potential
Mineralization and alteration of a similar style to that at the Mishi deposit is common on the Mishi Leases property. Like the Mishi deposit, the Mishi Leases lie astride a flexure in the regional ?Mishibishu deformation zone,? which parallels a contact between bimodal mafic-felsic volcanic and sedimentary rocks, and like the Mishi deposit, the mineralized and altered zones along this contact yield IP chargeability and gold geochemical anomalies. Windarra?s 2010 geochemical and geophysical surveys have confirmed that much of the potential lies near to this contact, and the surveys, along with results of previous drilling, stripping, and channel sampling, have yielded a considerable number of high-priority drill targets along 3 km of strike-length. The plan in the upcoming campaign is to drill-test a combination of these targets, including a number of the geophysical anomalies identified along the mineralized trend in the deeper-looking IP survey undertaken on the Mishi Leases this past fall.
This Press Release was prepared by Charles Greig, PGeo., a Director of Windarra Minerals Ltd. and a ?Qualified Person? as per NI43-101.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
?John Pallot?
President
For further information, please contact:
John Pallot, President
2300 ? 1066 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6E 3X2
Tel: (604) 688-1508 Fax: (604) 601-8253
Email: info@windarra.com, Website: www.windarra.com
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