Terrain Minerals has successfully wrapped up its first phase of drilling at its Smokebush project in Western Australia’s Mid West region, with 10 of the 11 holes drilled intersecting multiple zones of pegmatites.
The reverse-circulation (RC) drill program prioritised seven of the 11 pegmatites identified at the site, ranging from about 10m to 15m in width and 200m in length, before shifting undercover in about a 4km area.
A second phase of drilling is expected to begin in just days that will target multiple pegmatites at the company’s Hurley and Monza prospects. The next campaign will also follow up on induced-polarisation anomalies to test interpreted repetitions of the nearby Minjar-style gold mineralisation.
The Minjar Gold District is about 80km south of Yalgoo and consists of a series of small gold mines along a north-south strike length of some 50km.
Assays from Terrain’s first phase of drilling are expected within six weeks, while a detailed soil-sampling program to examine the southern extension of a copper-in-soil anomaly at its Larin’s Lane prospect will kick off next month.
The company says a copper target of about 600m by 350m, with elevated nickel values, constitutes a second new focus that it believes is worthy of further investigation. Management says there is a distinct coherent copper anomaly open to the south and east which has an association with observed nickel anomalism. Planning for drill testing of both the gold and copper-nickel targets will begin once boundaries have been defined.
Results from rock-chip samples the company reported last month in two areas between Smokebush’s Monza and Paradise City prospects returned up to 200 parts per million lithium oxide. It believes the pegmatites are travelling away from the Mt Mulgine granite intrusive that sits immediately west of its tenements, before fanning out and onto its land.
Terrain entered a farm-in joint venture at Smokebush in 2019, but now wholly-owns the project, which is about 350km north of Perth and 85km east/north-east of Perenjori in the State’s Mid West. The project’s five prospecting and exploration licences cover about 1254 hectares within the Yalgoo Mineral Field.
Terrain’s Smokebush project adjoins Mount Mulgine, where a 259-million-tonne resource contains 1 million ounces of gold, 44 million ounces of silver, 290,000 tonnes of tungsten oxide, 71,000 tonnes of molybdenum and 92,000 tonnes of copper. Mount Mulgine granite is associated with intense hydrothermal alteration, with late-stage fluids containing tungsten, molybdenum, gold, silver, bismuth and fluorite.
The Yalgoo district is a mineral province that hosts some handy deposits such as Silver Lake Resources’ Rothesay gold operation, 29Metals’ Golden Grove copper-gold-silver-zinc-lead mine to the north and Warriedar Resources’ Golden Range gold project that was formerly known as the Golden Dragon mine.
Terrain already has its eyes on gold mineralisation at Smokebush and will be keen to see the results of its assay to see if it can add lithium into the mix.
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By Michael Philipps
