Terrain Minerals is busy pursuing three gold projects this year, including two in Western Australia’s Mid West region and a newish gold project in Queensland, along with its gallium, rare earths and nickel-copper plays in WA.
The company has been recently preoccupied with its new gallium discovery at Larin’s Lane in its Smokebush project and has also been busy with its rare earths and nickel-copper interests at its Lort River project, near Esperance.
Terrain has now turned its immediate attention to the nearby Monza and Wildflower gold targets at the Smokebush project and to its new Queensland gold venture.
Terrain Minerals executive director Justin Virgin: “Terrain is well placed with a strong footprint in strategic gold regions in both Western Australia and Queensland. We are seeing increasing interest in our gold projects from both domestic and international participants, and we are looking forward to updating the market as we continue to hit our project milestones over the coming months.”
The company completed a scout air core drilling program on a small section of the Wildflower project in August last year to follow up on soil gold anomalism at both its Wildflower and nearby Cota targets.
At Wildflower, the early soil geochemistry produced an extensive and coherent 1000 metre by 500m gold-in-soil surface geochemical anomaly to a peak value of 246 parts per billion gold.
The anomalism was centred around a historic drill hole which intercepted 15m at 1.49 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 10m.
An initial follow-up air core drilling program on a small section of the Wildflower project comprised 72 air core holes for 1710m and revealed several promising gold intersections, including 9m at 1.17g/t gold from 30m downhole at Cota.
Eight follow-up reverse circulation drillholes for a total of 1182m resulted in generally low but consistent gold results that still represent valuable reconnaissance results.
Terrain says the results appear similar to those noted in scout drilling around Vault Minerals’ nearby 328,000-ounce Rothsay gold mine.
Further reverse circulation drilling was undertaken early this year, with results from later holes yet to be received.
Current reverse circulation results to hand include encouraging preliminary reconnaissance gold results from 13 holes, including a best grade of 1m at 1.06g/t from 131m and the longest intercept of 5m assaying 0.37g/t from 34m. The remaining intercepts are all in the 1m to 3m range with grades ranging between the lower cut-off grade of 0.2g/t gold up to 0.43g/t gold.
The results of work to date signify the presence of pervasive but low grade local gold anomalism at a possible kilometre scale that will inform the planned next phase of drilling at Wildflower and Cota.
Timing for future Wildflower work includes receipt this month of assays from January-February drilling and an air-core scout drilling program to be launched in May, with the results due back in July.
That program is expected to be followed up by reverse circulation drilling in September 2025, with results being received by December.
At its Monza project area in the northwest corner of the Smokebush tenement area, Terrain says further work is required, including validation of its initial interpretation that the principal style of gold mineralisation is associated with arsenic.
The company is encouraged by its early findings that gold mineralisation at Monza is analogous to the style typical of the adjoining Warriedar Resources’ Golden Range project to the north, which hosts a 1.29-million-ounce gold resource.
Terrain also has its eye on the potential availability of gold ore processing at any of the nearby treatment plants. The Deflector mill operated by Vault Minerals is the likely nearest plant to Terrain’s projects - particularly Monza - and it processes ore from Vault’s satellite high-grade Rothsay mine 200km away.
Monza appears to have a strike of more than 700m with mineralisation still open along strike and to depth. Initial modelling of the available information highlights a high-grade core, where previous drill intercepts exceed 20 gram x metres and a northward plunge.
Terrain says the core zone will be its initial drilling focus at Monza. The company has also slated preliminary metallurgical test work on the Monza mineralisation in April, which is expected to sort out the arsenic question. Results are expected in June.
The company is also on schedule to submit a mining lease application for the project in April and is working towards an initial mineral resource estimate for the project, which it expects to complete this year.
Terrain also plans to begin its resource definition reverse circulation drilling program at Monza in May, with results slated for July, and then to kick off geotechnical drilling after the drill results have been interpreted and modelled. That is likely to occur in August.
It has scheduled further multi-phase resource definition reverse circulation drilling for September, with assay results due in November. The company hopes to be in a position to release a maiden mineral resource estimate in December 2025
Terrain’s wholly-owned Biloela gold-copper project is about 400km north-west of Brisbane, along strike from the old Cracow gold mine that has produced more than 1.4 million ounces of gold to date.
The gold potential of the company’s 2500 square kilometres of ground at Biloela appears to be supported by findings of WA’s Centre for Exploration Targeting at the University of Western Australia, which previously identified the tenement area during a machine learning research project to seek out significant mineral deposits across Australia.
The Biloela gold-copper project encloses an extensive area with at least seven historical gold and/or copper mines and workings of varying grades and scales.
With only one minor tenement remaining to be granted, the company is positioned to potentially access priority gold and copper target areas across the project area.
Terrain plans to commence its initial on-ground exploration across Biloela before June and is preparing for a much-anticipated drilling program across the project’s copper and gold occurrences.
Seven priority gold and/or copper mineralisation target areas have been identified within the Biloela project based on favourable geology, known mineral occurrences, positive surface geochemistry and/or geophysical anomalism.
Terrain expects to kick off its first on-ground exploration across key targets in May and to receive the results from the surface sampling of key targets and areas of interest in July.
This will be followed by scout reverse circulation drilling of priority targets in September and release of assays from that work in November.
Terrain has a lot on its plate – but has more than enough encouragement for it to chew through its diverse projects which enclose an intriguing mix of gold, gallium and copper-nickel targets.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting?Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Doug Bright
