Terrain Minerals has fired the starting gun on its biggest-ever drilling campaign, an 86-hole, 10,905-metre reverse circulation program aimed at expanding its Smokebush gold-silver project in Western Australia’s Mid West region.
The ambitious program, slated to kick off in the second half of October, is designed to grow the project’s maiden 54,000-ounce gold resource at its Lightning deposit and to test a swag of new potential discovery targets.
The company’s 100 per cent-owned Smokebush project lies 350 kilometres north of Perth. In July, Terrain delivered a maiden inferred mineral resource for its Lightning prospect of 677,000 tonnes at 2.5 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for 54,000 ounces, along with 156,500 ounces of silver.
A key portion of that initial resource sits within an optimised open-pit shell, clocking in at 157,000 tonnes at a solid 3.5g/t gold for 17,500 ounces of the ever-seductive metal.
The new drilling blitz is split between resource definition and pure exploration. Fifty-four holes for 5735 metres will focus on infill and extensional drilling around Lightning, aimed at expanding the open-pittable component of the deposit. At the same time, the drill bit will also target extensions of the adjacent Monza structure. The aim is to upgrade parts of Lightning from the inferred to the indicated confidence category, a critical step that would allow the company to undertake initial mining studies.
The remaining 32 holes for 5170m will test a series of nearby greenfields exploration targets, including seven new priority induced polarisation (IP) geophysical targets, which management believes could represent repeats of the Lightning mineralised system.
Terrain Minerals executive director Justin Virgin said: "This drilling program is designed to support an upgrade of parts of the Lightning Mineral Resource from the Inferred to Indicated category, which would enable initial mining studies to be undertaken. This aligns with Terrain's stated strategy of working towards a potential small-scale toll milling operation, to fund future exploration and development across the broader project."
Virgin added that while the new campaign will be centred on the company's granted mining lease, with infill and extension drilling at the Lightning deposit an obvious priority, the other targets potentially represent strong discovery opportunities.
Terrain’s exploration thesis is that Lightning is no lone ranger, rather one member of a potentially much bigger family of gold deposits at Smokebush. And the local geology gives the theory some legs, with results continuing to point towards multiple parallel, stacked mineralised structures running across the company’s mining lease.
The project sits within the prolific Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt. Immediately to the north, Capricorn Metals’ Golden Range project hosts a cluster of gold deposits and historic pits. A little further afield to the north, 29Metals’ massive Golden Grove copper-gold-silver-lead-zinc mine and Vault Minerals’ Rothsay gold mine also highlight the region’s mineral endowment.
The company’s confidence in its exploration model is bolstered by past success using a combination of IP geophysics and surface soil geochemistry. The initial Lightning discovery was aided largely by IP surveys, with a follow-up IP program earlier this year identifying a series of new chargeability anomalies.
When these geophysical anomalies coincide with surface gold-in-soil geochemical signatures, they present as compelling drill targets. The upcoming program will test 16 of these IP chargeability anomalies, 14 interpreted strike extensions and two soil geochemical anomalies.
Earlier this month, Terrain announced a strategic placement and rights issue to raise a combined total of $2,513,000, which included firm commitments for a $1 million strategic investment by Gandel Metals.
With solid funding in the kitty, drilling contractors already lined up and their rods set to start turning next month, the upcoming program is a significant step-change for Terrain. Success on either the resource expansion or discovery front could rapidly progress its ultimate goal of establishing a foothold as a small-scale producer in a well-endowed corner of Western Australia.
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