Novo, Manhattan fire up drill rig for overlooked NSW gold tilt

Novo Resources is set to get the rods turning at its Tibooburra gold project in north-western New South Wales, after securing a 70 per cent stake in a joint venture with previous owner Manhattan Gold Corporation at the historic high-grade project.

The company says its 2700-metre reverse circulation (RC) drilling program is slated to begin in early November. The drill bit will be pointed at its high-grade Clone prospect, targeting a northern extension to a shallow, plunging gold shoot that remains open beneath the old historic workings of the Albert Goldfield.

Previous drilling at Clone has already delivered a swag of impressive results, including a headline hit of 12m at 5.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from just 16m downhole. That intercept also contained a cracking high-grade core of 5m grading 13.74g/t gold from just 23m, priming the ground for extension.

Novo says its drilling so far has demonstrated solid grade and width continuity, defining a near-surface, high-grade shoot over a 300-metre strike length and to a vertical depth of 90m. The upcoming program will deploy a series of step-out holes to test for the northern extension of the known mineralisation, alongside targeted infill drilling on existing drill lines to close gaps and investigate the potential for parallel gold lodes.

The Clone prospect is littered with historical gold workings along a 600m strike, within a broader gold-in-soil anomaly measuring up to 250m wide.

The trigger for the new campaign follows Novo meeting its minimum expenditure requirement under a farm-in agreement. Novo will manage the project and fully fund exploration, free-carrying Manhattan's 30 per cent interest until it completes a bankable feasibility study.

The broader Tibooburra grounds sit within an intriguing boundary between two major geological terrains, the Delamerian and Thompson Orogens. The project area is considered significantly underexplored by modern techniques, particularly where mineralised trends extend under younger sedimentary cover, which previously obstructed historic explorers.

The project occupies a largely overlooked corner of the country, despite lying north of one of Australia's most famous mining towns, Broken Hill.

The emerging gold region is also just across the border from some of the most closely watched copper-gold activity in Australia, with South Australia’s Curnamona springing to life following Sandfire Resources' $210 million deal to acquire 80 per cent of Havilah Resources’ Kalkaroo project.

Nearby, Broken Hill Gold has opened up a much bigger exploration front at its White Dam project with the Icebreaker discovery, where high-grade gold and copper sulphides have emerged beneath shallow gold resources, offering an intriguing exploration blueprint for Novo to follow.

While Clone is the immediate focus, regional work is also underway to build a pipeline of targets at Tibooburra. Field crews have wrapped up significant stream, soil and rock chip sampling programs over the past two months. The work is designed to better understand gold distribution across the historical goldfield and identify new targets for follow-up drilling in the new year.

Novo also boasts an extensive portfolio of gold projects spanning Australia’s prolific gold regions, including Victoria’s Belltopper project, where it recently defined a maiden inferred resource of 760,000 tonnes at 3.6g/t for 87,000 ounces of gold at its Leven Star Reef.

In Western Australia’s Pilbara, the company's vast Egina and Teichman projects offer exposure to an emerging gold province, with Egina sitting next door to De Grey Mining’s world-class 11-million-ounce Hemi discovery. The exploration junior is also making headway at Wyloo, where maiden drilling confirmed a polymetallic system with hits of up to 9m at 92g/t silver from surface.

With drilling at Tibooburra imminent, Novo is preparing to put the drill bit back to work and test just how far Clone's high-grade gold system might extend.

And as explorers increasingly rediscover SA/NSW' forgotten goldfields, Novo has secured its place in the hunt and now has a chance to help write the region's next high-grade discovery chapter.
 

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