King River Resources has lit up its recently acquired Mindoolah gold project in Western Australia’s Murchison province, returning a suite of high-grade rock chip results including one that clocked a stunning 44.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold in quartz stockwork.
The surface sampling blitz across the historically mined project, which sits 70km north-west of Cue, also returned impressive hits of 22.6g/t and 16.95g/t as well as multiple assays over 8g/t gold.
The results generated from detailed mapping and sampling have helped the company define a pipeline of drill-ready targets across several prospects, with a follow-up reverse circulation (RC) drill program now scheduled to begin in early October.
The standout 44.3g/t gold result came from the project's Bertram’s prospect, where other samples also yielded 22.6g/t, 8.96g/t and 3.06g/t gold. The company says the high-grade hits are associated with a prominent intrusive dyke corridor and stockwork vein arrays.
At the Le Soleil open pit, immediately to the west of Bertam's, sampling delivered 16.95g/t and 8.96g/t gold at mapped shear and banded iron formation (BIF) junctions. A further 310 metres to the north, the historic Double Barrel Morepork prospect returned 8.11g/t gold from a quartz vein in old workings.
King River’s technical team believes it has cracked the code at Mindoolah, suggesting the Bertram’s, Le Soleil and nearby Excelsior prospects all share a similar structural and geochemical makeup. Management says the shared characteristics point to a recurring, highly productive structural template running northeast to southwest that could be repeated across the wider project area, hinting at camp-scale potential.
Adding further spice to the story, the company has identified two other complementary target styles. At the Cundy prospect 600 metres to the south of Le Soleil, sampling returned up to 1.19g/t gold from quartz veining next to a folded BIF, confirming what the company calls a classic “BIF structural trap”. This style of mineralisation shows a distinct polymetallic signature, different to the gold-dominant systems at Bertram’s and Le Soleil.
Meanwhile, a new mafic intrusive target has been unearthed at the Main Reef prospect, sitting between Le Soleil and Cundy, where a chlorite-altered dyke returned 1.15g/t gold, 218 parts per million (ppm) nickel, 1245ppm chrome and 13.35 per cent iron. King River says the target aligns directly with an untested 100m-long aeromagnetic high, defining another priority target for the upcoming drilling.
King River Resources managing director Graham Gadsby said: “Our technical interpretation indicates that Bertram's, Le Soleil and Excelsior share a broadly comparable structural and geochemical framework. This gives us increasing confidence that similar high-grade structural settings may repeat across the broader Project.With high-resolution geophysics, detailed mapping and multi-element geochemistry now integrated, we have established a strong pipeline of drill-ready targets ahead of the Phase 2 RC program in early October.”
The company has moved quickly at Mindoolah since acquiring the project earlier this year. Official government production records show just 38,589 tonnes of ore was mined at site during its modern open-pit run between 1986 and 1989. However, King River’s own measuring tape has thrown up a sizeable historical head-scratcher.
After calculating the actual voids carved out across the Le Soleil, Bertram’s, Excelsior, Cundy and Mindoolah Main Reef pits, the company arrived at a whopping 1.08 million tonnes of excavated material – about 28 times the tonnage recorded in the official books.
Even after allowing for some 746,000 tonnes of material still sitting in surface stockpiles and waste dumps across the project, King River says roughly 339,000 tonnes remains unaccounted for. That missing material alone represents nearly nine times the entire officially recorded mining tonnage.
The numbers leave King River with an intriguing pair of possibilities. Either a hefty volume of gold-bearing material remains hiding in plain sight among Mindoolah’s stockpiles, or considerably more ore passed through the historical processing circuit than the paperwork suggests.
Whichever way the historical ledger ultimately balances, the discrepancy has handed King River another compelling angle to chase at Mindoolah.
The company has also been shrewd in its funding strategy, recently topping up its war chest with a $3.29 million cash injection from the sale of 13 million shares it held in Tivan Limited. This follows the sale of another 8 million Tivan shares in the previous quarter for $2.67 million, leaving King River well-funded for its exploration push.
With a recently completed heritage survey with the Wajarri Yamaji people paving the way for drilling and assays from a phase one stockpile drill program still pending, plenty of newsflow looks set to come.
With a fistful of cash and a suite of high-grade surface hits across multiple target styles, King River isn't just knocking on the door at Mindoolah, it's getting ready to kick it down with the drill bit. As the rods prepare to turn in October, the market will be watching to see if these exceptional surface grades can translate into a significant discovery at depth.
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By Murray Ward
