Terrain Minerals (ASX: TMX) has nailed what looks like a new gold discovery in WA’s Mid-West region with its first pass drill campaign that followed up on historic arsenic and gold soil anomalies.
The maiden campaign at Terrain’s Wildflower project hit 9m at 1.17g/t gold from 30m, including 3m at 2.61g/t gold. The 72-hole, 1710m reconnaissance air-core drilling program also picked up multiple broad zones of lower-grade but geochemically-significant shallow supergene gold in two holes.
Those two holes intercepted 42m at 0.11g/t gold from surface and 18m going 0.14g/t gold from 42m.
The drilling was undertaken at three separate but adjacent gold targets within the company’s greater Smokebush Project about 350km from Perth and 85km east/north-east of the wheatbelt town of Perenjori, within the Yalgoo Mineral Field.
All of the drilling sought to test a gold/arsenic soil anomalism within the Wildflower gold project area defined back in 1983 and confirmed by more recent holders of the ground in 2001 and 2009. The anomalies have since remained untested until Terrain’s recent drilling in September-October.
The three targets from east to west comprise Cotta, T16 and Wildflower which lie within about 3.2kms of each other in the western arm of Terrain’s irregularly-shaped Smokebush project exploration licence.
Together, the three targets comprise the current key elements of the company’s newly-designated Wildflower gold project, which distinguishes the locality from Terrain’s other Larin’s Lane gallium project in the south-east of the Smokebush licence and its Monza project area in the northern part of Smokebush.
While Cotta delivered the latest results of consequence, the T16 target – just 1300m to the east of Cotta – features seven close-spaced historic soil gold anomalies in the range of 50 to 100ppb gold and a single soil result of more than 100ppb gold however that area remains undrilled and appears to now be a priority for follow-up.
The Wildflower target, a further 2kms north-east of T16, shows also shows significant historic soil gold anomalism with some results above 100ppb gold, most of which lie on a single east-west sample line but were accompanied by two outlying hits in the 50 to more than 100ppb gold.
Additionally, a single historic drillhole plugged right into the centre zone of the anomalism nailed 15m grading 1.49g/t gold from just 10m.
Despite about 63 air-core holes being put into this zone, Terrain did not report any significant drill results from the target, although the intensity of the Wildflower soil anomaly and the solid old drill hit suggests the work requires reappraisal.
This might include a review of drilling depths and/or direction, regolith, re-examination of old results and if possible, re-assaying of old sample pulps if available to be accompanied by local structural mapping, with aeromagnetic data if possible.
Terrain says its best hit from Cotta is significant and may relate to a shallow supergene oxide zone on top of a possible gold-hosting, north-east trending shear and that the inferred supergene result could suggest a nearby primary gold source.
Terrain’s Smokebush project is surrounded by historic major projects. The Yalgoo and Payne’s Find greenstone belts include the historic Warriedar, Rothsay and Scuddles- Golden Grove silver-gold and base metals mining areas all of which lie within 100km of Terrain’s ground and comprise a solid exploration address.
The company is continuing to review the results of its recent program and their significance with further follow up work in mind – including mapping.
Terrain’s future work is likely to include reverse-circulation drilling to dig a bit deeper into the story and the widespread historic anomalism. Its own recent gold hits say there is almost certainly a bigger tale to be told here.
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