Reach secures mining lease for WA Murchison gold project

Reach Resources has secured its prospective Jacamar gold project within the company’s Murchison South gold project in WA with a recent mining lease grant centred less than 1 kilometre southeast from the historic Payne’s Find Hotel on WA’s Great Northern Highway which runs through the tenement. 

The northern boundary of the mining lease is just over 1km south of the company’s Blue Heaven deposit, on the same major Primrose Fault which is a mineralisation controlling structure in the area and almost certainly also influences mineralisation at the nearby privately owned Daffodil deposit and Reach’s Pansy deposit.   

The eastern boundary of the new lease lies 180m west of the Daffodil mine pit and the same distance northwest of the Pansy open pit.

While the adjacent Daffodil and Pansy pits fall outside the boundaries of Reach's newly granted mining lease, the Pansy Pit is located immediately south of the lease and forms a key part of Reach’s broader Murchison South holdings. 

Reach recently declared a maiden mineral resource estimate for its Pansy deposit of 72,000 tonnes at 2.5g/t gold for 5800 ounces of the precious metal, complementing the resource at its nearby Blue Heaven deposit of 681,000t at 2.8g/t gold for 61,300 ounces, bringing the project's total inventory to 67,100 ounces of gold. 

Mineralisation at Pansy remains open at depth and along strike, with historical drilling limited to just 60m.

In contrast, the adjacent Daffodil Pit, a historic open-cut operation from the late 1980s originally developed by Quartz Reef Mining is now held under separate tenure by Paynes Find Mining (PFM) on a separate mining lease. 

PFM, an unlisted entity focused on small-scale processing and bulk sampling from historical stockpiles, controls the area including potential ground between Daffodil and the northern end of Pansy. 

Reach's subsidiary, Cervantes Gold, has previously conducted drilling south of Daffodil into adjacent areas, but the Daffodil pit itself remains under PFM's operational approvals, including a large-scale mining project management plan granted in 2021.

With Reach’s new mining lease lying south of its Blue Heaven deposit and north of its Pansy Pit, the Jacamar deposit is interpreted as a highly prospective extension along the locality’s primary gold influencing structure, the Primrose Fault. 

While historical gold-producing workings at Jacamar have seen only shallow exploration, an RC drilling program in mid-2022 in which the deepest hole reached 47m returned strong grades in close association with old workings.

Results include three holes each yielding 1m intercepts assaying 3.14, 2.09 and 3.35g/t gold, with the last 3.35g/t intercept terminating the hole at 29m in mineralisation.

Importantly, high-grade intercepts at Blue Heaven extend to about 200m depth, pointing to potentially untapped mineralisation at Jacamar below the current maximum depth of 47m. 

Reach is undertaking an ongoing rock chip sampling program across the Jacamar lease area with the aim of gaining a first-pass appreciation of surface gold distribution, identifying exposed quartz veins and further de-risking the prospect.

The company’s new lease grant expands the scope for two significant mining zones at Murchison South – at Blue Heaven and a possible combined Pansy-Jacamar system.

With gold prices now trading well above the levels used in Reach's economic modelling, the company’s Murchison South project stands poised for rapid advancement. 

The project’s location at Paynes Find on the sealed Great Northern Highway in the Yalgoo Mineral Field and in the southern part of WA’s Murchison region offers almost unprecedented access and logistical benefits for a promising gold project only 350km north of Perth. 

Keen observers will be waiting on field sampling and deeper drilling results from Jacamar which could unlock further gold potential in this historic but remarkably under-explored corner of WA's prolific scattering of goldfields. 

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au