Terrain Minerals has leapt into a new drill campaign at its 100 per cent-owned Wildflower gold project in Western Australia’s Murchison province, with an air-core (AC) program of 41 holes for 2100m set to test its two high-priority targets – Wildflower and Cota.
Management is aiming to follow up on historical drilling and soil sampling that produced encouraging results at Wildflower. It says it will undertake its first AC drill program at the project to pursue what it considers to be high prospectivity for gold at the two target areas.
The AC drilling will target a significant 1000m-by-500m gold-in-soil geochemical anomaly at the aptly-named Wildflower prospect, where previous results recorded a peak value of 246 parts per billion gold.
The company’s Cota prospect also includes a sizeable coincident gold-arsenic anomaly that remains untested by drilling. Based on its field observations and mapping program, it believes a maiden 900m AC program at the target is justified.
Management says it is encouraged by previous drilling results at its Wildflower prospect, with a rotary air-blast (RAB) hole returning 15m going 1.49 grams per tonne gold from 10m within the extensive surface anomaly zone.
Only one reverse-circulation (RC) hole has been drilled at the site, producing 5m at 1.03g/t gold from 100m. Management believes much of the historical drilling undertaken was ineffective due to the holes rarely plunging to more than 5m in depth, therefore not adequately testing any gold system potentially present at the site.
Terrain Minerals executive director Justin Virgin said: "This marks a significant milestone in our exploration efforts as we seek to capitalise on the promising gold-in-soil anomalies identified within this highly-prospective area. The historical results from previous drilling campaigns, including the encouraging intercepts of gold, have further strengthened our belief in the potential for a substantial gold discovery at Wildflower.”
The Wildflower project, which sits some 350km from Perth and 65km west of the township of Payne’s Find, is considered to represent the southern extension of the company’s Smokebush project and is also just south of Warriedar Resources’ Ricciardo gold deposit. It also is in proximity to Red 5’s high-grade underground Rothsay gold mine.
Management is on-record as saying it is committed to unearthing a “company-making” discovery and believes Wildflower has the potential for a substantial find based on its favourable geological features and historical data assays. It notes that previous drill intersections are consistent with the grade and thickness reported by Warriedar in past announcements.
The company’s preliminary field mapping suggests that gold anomalism trends north-to-east at the site, similar to Warriedar’s nearby deposits.
Terrain is also planning an RC drill program at its Monza and Lightning prospects, where previous results from maiden drilling at the latter returned 2m at 6.22g/t gold from 61m and 1m at 5.94g/t from 82m. Historic drilling at Monza produced an encouraging 4m at 4.46g/t gold from 51m and 7m going 2.72g/t from 25m.
Management says it will wait to view the assay results from the Wildflower campaign to decide whether to further explore the targets, prior to kicking off drilling at Monza-Lightning.
In a strong show of support for both the company’s plans and projects, Virgin recently stumped-up an impressive $102,000 to participate in a heavily-subscribed placement to raise funds to further Terrain’s exploration programs. It has placed him squarely in the substantial shareholder category, with a hold of 5.1 per cent of the company's shares on issue.
Gold has continued its price surge, trading today at US$2661 (AU$3887) per ounce for a near 3 per cent gain for the week and up a notable 42 per cent this year.
So, with WA’s renowned annual wildflower season in full swing after record rains were recorded in the Mid West region, Terrain – with its range of promising gold targets – could be the next one to bloom.
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By Craig Nolan
