Reach Resources’ maiden drill campaign for lithium has begun at its Bonzer pegmatite field in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region, with some 2500m of reverse-circulation (RC) drilling and about 2000m of diamond drillhole work.
The campaign – at the company’s Morrissey Hill lithium project at Yinnetharra, 180km east of Carnarvon – has been designed to target soil sampling and rock chip lithium anomalies, the lithium grade, the size of the mapped surface pegmatites and any others that may occur in the sub-surface.
Reach previously identified soil sampling anomalies with assays of up to 759 parts per million lithium oxide and rock-chip anomalies with a best result going 2.3 per cent lithium oxide.
The drilling program will be comprised of up to 10 RC holes and up to 10 diamond drillholes, plunging to between 100m and 300m. Some reconnaissance holes may also target the Malibu lithium prospect, the Swallowtail Copper prospect and outcropping pegmatites south of the Bonzer pegmatite field.
The company says it has worked with the Yinggarda traditional owners to assess and clear four areas across its Morrissey Hill project, in a bid to obtain all of the necessary regulatory approvals and permits to ensure drilling operations do not interfere with any sites of cultural significance.
Bonzer, which features a spodumene-petalite subtype pegmatite, has multiple high-priority targets that were defined by Reach’s recent soil sampling assays and which confirmed the occurrence of lithium at extremely high levels. The coherent lithium values suggest an anomaly that remains open in excess of 1500m along strike and 700m width.
Malibu, to the south-east of Bonzer, has returned encouraging assays from pegmatite rock chips of up to 6524ppm lithium oxide, 505ppm caesium, 185.5ppm tantalum oxide and 1426ppm rubidium.
Swallowtail, which is to the east of Bonzer and within Morrissey Hill, contains prospective copper-gold-silver mineralisation of visible malachite in an open strike length of 150m, with rock-chip samples reporting values of up to 33.2 percent copper, 0.2 grams per tonne gold and 141.8g/t silver. It occurs within the Stringer fault zone where base metal and precious metal endowments have been previously recorded.
In addition, the company has its 100 per cent-owned Wabli Creek project in a separate permit to the south of Morrissey Hill. It has returned spectacular assay results from eluvial and rock samples going 10.3 per cent niobium and rare earths up to 7082ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO).
Previous results 400m to the west gave values up to 14.3 per cent niobium and 3698ppm TREO, which management says is indicative of a highly-mineralised stacked rare earths pegmatite source that also contains high levels of titanium.
Reach is fully funded for its maiden drilling program having completed a $4 million capital raise earlier this month and is poised to rapidly expand its activities should success be encountered with the drillbit. The company says its permits contain more than 50 untested pegmatites within one of Australia’s hottest critical mineral regions.
With some of WA mining’s biggest players sitting all around them and the Gascoyne region growing in status, the market will be keen to see the unveiling of Reach’s first drilling results.
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By Gary Kjellgren
