King River Resources is targeting high-grade gold in the Northern Territory as drilling kicks off at the Lone Star prospect at Tennant Creek. The company is targeting a series of coincident magnetic-gravity anomalies that it is interpreting as potentially the geophysical signature for the high-grade copper-gold rich ironstone ore bodies found in the Tennant Creek mineral field.
The Lone Star tenement boundary is a mere 700 metres east of the Mauretania deposit where drilling by Emmerson Resources in 2019 returned a stunning intercept of 20 metres at 38.5 grams per tonne, over an ounce per tonne gold, in diamond drilling.
The company’s planned 2,000 metre RC drilling program in the Northern Territory is primarily aimed at testing three coincident magnetic-gravity anomalies at Lone Star.
King River’s comprehensive land holding at Tennant Creek is comprised of 16 tenements that cover over 7,900 square kilometres of the very fertile multi-metal terrane. Tennant Creek is located in the centre of Australia’s Northern Territory, approximately 1,000km south of the Territory’s capital city of Darwin. It is linked to Darwin via the Stuart Highway and the Adelaide-Darwin rail-line.
Whilst much of King River’s energy in recent months has been focussed on its feasibility study on the Speewah ‘Specialty Metals’ deposit in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, the company’s exploration group has been quietly evaluating and building on King River’s strategic position at Tennant Creek – particularly in light of the uber-high gold price environment.
The prolific Tennant Creek goldfield was once the third largest gold producing region in Australia, with more than 6.7 million ounces of gold production since the 1930s. In modern times, the high-grade goldfield has proven a company-maker for a string of household names, with the likes of Peko-Wallsend and WMC working the region in the 1960s and 1970s before Normandy Poseidon rose to fame in the 1980s with the discovery of the White Devil mine just 40km north west of the town.
The rich copper-gold ore bodies at Tennant Creek are genetically related to BHP’s giant Olympic Dam, or iron oxide copper gold deposit in South Australia. However, whilst the Tennant Creek deposits haven’t yet matched Olympic Dam in terms of overall size, they certainly make up for it in grade.
Historic discoveries in field, such as Nobles Nob, Juno, Warrego-Gecko and White Devil, have consistently churned out impressive mined grades at 15-20 g/t gold and 2-4% copper.
Typically, the Tennant Creek ore bodies have a small footprint and lie sub-vertically within the stratigraphy, making exploration somewhat more difficult than might be expected in other exploration hotspots.
King River began its exploration at Tennant Creek late last year, undertaking ground magnetic and gravity surveys across several priority target areas. Initial work identified several of the signature coincident magnetic-gravity targets across the field including the Lone Star, Commitment and BIF Hill prospects in the main Tennant Creek goldfield. Several other potential targets have also been identified in the nearby Barkley, Rover and Kurundi goldfields.
King River’s current drilling program will test the three anomalies at Lone Star, which excitingly, cover several hundred metres of strike. It will then move on to the nearby Commitment target that stretches over an impressive kilometre of strike.
As the current drilling campaign proceeds, the company is also evaluating and building a highly prospective pipeline of projects throughout the region. Ongoing exploration will include air and ground geophysics across the company’s holdings at Tennant Creek East and Barkley goldfields and reconnaissance at Kurundi to define the next tier of drilling targets for testing late in the year.
With gold recently shattering its US$2,000 ceiling and continuing to reach for the stars, King River may have timed its run perfectly as it commences exploration across the Tennant Creek goldfield. Updates are expected in the coming weeks as the company drill tests its high-grade gold targets across this lucrative terrane.
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