Matt Birney

Budding WA gold producer, Ora Banda Mining, has delivered a maiden mineral resource estimate for the Riverina South prospect as it prepares to start mining at the nearby Riverina open pit this month as part of its $45 million Davyhurst gold redevelopment 120km north-west of Kalgoorlie. After an extensive drilling program, the company released an initial resource for Riverina South of 650,000 tonnes at 2.1 g/t for 43,000oz of contained gold.

The proposed multibillion-dollar merger between Kalgoorlie Super Pit owners Northern Star Resources and Saracen Mineral Holdings might be the talk of the town at next week’s Diggers & Dealers conference but gold junior and budding developer, Middle Island Resources, has been consistently kicking goals at its historic Sandstone gold project in WA during a massive two-phase, 50,000m-plus drilling campaign this year.

Paydirt Media has kept the ball rolling in Australia’s resurgent mining sector conference circuit, this week hosting the Australian Nickel Conference at Perth’s Pan Pacific Hotel. The conference held on Tuesday 6 October 2020, was a showcase of who’s who in the nickel sector highlighting a string of projects across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Terrain Minerals continues to kick goals across its auriferous project area’s in WA with recent sampling smoking out a series of high-grade gold samples from the Murchison region, north of Perth. Rock chip and surface sampling along strike from the recent drilling over the Smokebush project has returned a string of gold-rich results weighing in at up to an astounding 100 g/t gold.

Oakdale Resources’ shares have been on a tear of late after the company joined the hunt for the next Julimar and quickly identified a bevy of targets across its Crown nickel-PGE project in Western Australia. The new project is a just stone’s throw away from Chalice Gold Mines’ headline-grabbing discovery, located a mere 9km to the east of Julimar delivering Oakdale a prime position in this emerging nickel terrane.

Venus Metals Corporation and joint venture partner, Rox Resources, have continued their golden plunder across the Youanmi terrane in WA, with the resurgent mining centre continuing to return a swag of gold intercepts for the duo including 4m at 15.95 g/t gold from a new discovery zone 3km north of the mine site.

ASX-listed Aruma Resources has agreed to sell its Slate Dam gold project in WA’s Eastern Goldfields to its neighbour and ASX-listed gold hopeful, Black Cat Syndicate, for $500,000 cash, with the deposit of $50,000 already paid and the balance due on settlement. Also included in the transaction are the Trojan gold resource and Clinker Hill projects.

Terrain Minerals looks to be vectoring in on gold mineralisation hidden below surface dirt at its Wild-viper prospect lying adjacent to the Goldfields Highway, 68km south of Leanora in WA. Terrain said encouraging first pass drill results from its maiden drill tests at Wild-viper confirmed the potential for widespread mineralisation suggesting it could be on the edge of something more significant.

ASX-listed minerals and advanced materials development company, Neometals, has continued to build a comprehensive nickel inventory at its Mt Edwards project in Western Australia. Recent work has included a doubling of contained nickel within its 132N deposit resulting in an updated resource weighing in at 460,000 tonnes at 2.0 per cent nickel.