Marathon Advises Gold/Copper Drilling Underway

Adelaide, Mar 2, 2006 (ABN Newswire) - Marathon (ASX: MTN) has advised that an RC drill rig is on site and drilling at its Glenlyle/Kalymna gold/copper project in western Victoria. The aim of the drilling is to test separate well defined anomalism identified by geophysical and geochemical surveys, which have a potential for porphyry copper, gold or gold/copper mineralisation.

Marathon CEO, Dr John Santich, said that the present 8 hole RC drilling program of 900 meters will determine the source of the anomalism. Three of eight drill holes are complete and have returned highly encouraging data.

"There is disseminated sulphidic material beneath about 40 m cover," Dr Santich said, "about 80 m in drill hole GRC01 and 20m in drill hole KLRC01, and samples have been dispatched for analysis."

Dr Santich said that at this stage, the Company sees the geophysical IP responses as probably due to this disseminated sulphide mineralization, also found in adjacent shallow air core drilling across the magnetic high in historical exploration.

Marathon has two adjacent gold/copper tenements in western Victoria, ELs 4526 and 4621 known as Kalymna and Glenlyle. An IP survey was conducted to refine known magnetic and geochemical targets, and the current RC drilling is a follow up on earlier geophysical work and shallow air core geochemical drilling.

Marathon's tenements are to the southwest of Mt Ararat copper deposit of 1Mt/2.7% Cu and south of the old Moyston Mine along the strike of regional geological feature, the Moyston Fault Zone. The Moyston Gold Field produced around 100,000 oz gold from steeply plunging shoots between 1850 and 1900. The tenements are about 20 km southwest of Ararat and 45 km south of Stawell, both well known mining centres of western Victoria.

Known primarily for its uranium resource at Mt Gee in the Northern Flinders Ranges, Marathon has a number of promising gold/copper projects in its porfolio, including the old Mongolata gold field near the copper mining town of Burra, and two IOCG/U properties in SA with four drill ready targets near Coober Pedy and two near Glendambo in the Gawler Craton.