Right Resources puts tungsten twist on historic NSW goldfields
More than a century after gold prospectors peppered the valleys of southern New South Wales with shafts, picks and shovels, ASX-listed Right Resources has returned to the historic Tumbarumba goldfields with a rather more sophisticated arsenal and a potentially valuable new metal in its sights.
Gold may have been the prize that lured the old-timers to the district; however, the company believes the district could also be hiding a sizeable tungsten opportunity, with the critical mineral prized for its hardness, heat resistance and applications in defence, advanced manufacturing and engineering.
Notably, Right Resources is deliberately targeting opportunities where two or more commodities might be mined from the same operation, giving it more than one string to its economic bow. Should gold come along for the ride with tungsten, the precious metal could eventually provide valuable credits to help keep production costs in check.
And while the early prospectors relied on sharp eyes, strong backs and luck, the company is bringing university researchers, sophisticated geochemistry and modern metallurgical science to a district whose geological secrets may have remained hidden in plain sight.
Local folklore even has it that enterprising miners maintained phantom claims across the Victorian border, allegedly passing off NSW gold as Victorian production to dodge the taxman. Whether the tale has grown taller with time is anybody's guess, but it adds colour to a region where the pursuit of precious metals has long inspired ingenuity.
Today, managing director Graham Howard is applying that ingenuity to identifying gold and tungsten mineralisation, securing prospective ground without paying a king's ransom and tackling geology, metallurgy and permitting before committing heavily to drilling.
For Howard, the return to Tumbarumba is something of a homecoming. As a university student, he used to venture into the district to pan for gold, hoping to turn a few specks of the yellow metal into enough cash to fund a night at the pub. Now, decades later, he is back chasing a potentially much bigger prize.
The seasoned operator brings more than 39 years of experience in geology and mining operations, including gold projects such as Newcrest Mining’s Telfer and Boddington operations. His CV also includes the successful ASX listing of critical minerals developer VHM Ltd.
There is financial firepower around the boardroom table, too. Non-executive director Michael Willoughby has more than 27 years in resources and is Global Co-Head of Metals and Mining at investment bank Jefferies, bringing extensive mergers, acquisitions and capital markets experience.
The company's board also includes geologist Greg Winch, founder and chief geology officer of Canadian-listed Allied Gold Corporation, valued at more than $3 billion, alongside experienced chairman Chris Brown and executive director Lauren Robinson.
Right Resources' principal hunting ground is its Tumbarumba portfolio, part of a wholly owned NSW exploration package covering a massive 2459 square kilometres, including 2261 square kilometres around Tumbarumba.
It is heavyweight gold country. The broader Lachlan Orogen hosts a gold endowment exceeding 59 million ounces, while the company's Tumbarumba ground stretches across more than 90km of the regionally significant Gilmore fault zone.
Much of Right Resources' patch has escaped the systematic modern exploration that helped uncover major deposits elsewhere in the geological belt.
Since listing in September 2025, the company has moved from portfolio assembly into geological research, tungsten discoveries, metallurgical testing and maiden drilling.
Its immediate focus is the Blue project, roughly 22 kilometres north of Tumbarumba, where gold and tungsten anomalies span an exploration area measuring a significant 10.5km north–south and 7.8km east–west.
Within that footprint sits a more concentrated 4.7km by 3.4km tungsten anomaly and four priority prospects – Moonlight, Aster, Luna and Nova.
Aircore drilling underway at Right Resources' Blue project in NSW. Credit: File
Blue has already delivered a result capable of raising eyebrows, returning rock-chip assays at a whopping 4.3 per cent tungsten trioxide – an eye-catching indication of the mineralisation potentially lurking within the company's sprawling ground.
Moonlight is Right Resources' highest-ranked tungsten target, with mapping outlining a northwest-trending structural corridor extending more than three kilometres and measuring up to 500 metres wide.
Multiple tungsten-bearing quartz lodes, veins and pegmatites have been identified, including visible scheelite, one of the principal tungsten-bearing minerals.
Rock-chip assays have returned 0.61, 0.48 and 0.22 per cent tungsten trioxide, alongside gold values reaching 0.25 grams per tonne (g/t).
Outcropping lodes range from about half a metre to two metres wide, with one quartz structure traced for 350m along strike.
Together, the results point to a sizeable tungsten-bearing system with multiple drill targets emerging.
Right Resources has completed the native title “Right to Negotiate” process covering the Westdale exploration licence, which hosts its Moonlight prospect. The milestone clears an administrative hurdle for exploration in the Green Hills State Forest, although further site-specific approvals may be required.
While Moonlight leads the tungsten charge, the company’s Aster prospect is carrying the flag for gold.
Aster occupies a north–south shear corridor extending more than four kilometres, where gold, bismuth and tellurium geochemistry is helping the company unravel the structures controlling mineralisation.
Rock-chip sampling has returned an eye-catching 5.16g/t gold, with other samples delivering 4.79g/t and 3.07g/t.
Aster began drilling in October, completing 22 aircore holes under a maiden program targeting 2000m across 60 shallow holes to depths of 30–50m.
Another 29 holes were completed at Luna, bringing the reported total to 51, with initial assays for both prospects pending at the lab.
Luna also supplied material for the company's initial tungsten metallurgical investigations, which have delivered some of its more encouraging technical evidence.
Perth specialist NAGROM tested how Blue's tungsten mineralisation responds to conventional separation techniques, notably tackling the prickly processing question well before any resource definition.
Initial flotation testing recovered 87.3 per cent of the tungsten into a rougher concentrate grading 27 per cent tungsten trioxide, while separate heavy-liquid separation testing achieved an indicative 81.6 per cent recovery into a product grading 66.5 per cent tungsten trioxide.
Importantly, the composite sample carried a head grade of just 0.48 per cent tungsten trioxide, pointing to the material's excellent processing characteristics.
Standard commercial tungsten concentrates typically require a grade of 65 per cent tungsten trioxide or higher to be sold to smelters without heavy penalties. Achieving 66.5 per cent at an 81.6 per cent recovery rate through heavy-liquid separation shows the ore could reach market-ready purity using simple, low-capex, density-based gravity methods.
Behind the fieldwork sits a research effort more commonly associated with explorers sporting substantially bigger budgets.
The company has teamed up with the University of Tasmania's Centre for Ore Deposit and Earth Sciences (CODES) to investigate Tumbarumba's mineralising systems through fluid inclusion studies, structural interpretation and geochemistry.
The emerging interpretation is that Tumbarumba could host reduced intrusion-related gold systems resembling those of the famous Tintina gold province stretching across Alaska and Canada's Yukon.
Such systems can carry distinctive metal signatures, with silver, lead and zinc towards their outer reaches, gold and arsenic in transitional zones and gold-bismuth-tellurium-tungsten potentially pointing towards the richer heart of the mineralising system.
Right Resources is effectively following the chemical fingerprints of ancient mineralising fluids rather than waiting for spectacular outcrops to announce themselves. The company’s Pilot gold project provides a window into that approach.
Pilot sits within an interpreted intrusion-related system measuring roughly 2.4km by 2.9km, centred on a historic goldfield that once supported rich underground workings.
Records from the old Pilot Reef mine indicate production of 2662 tonnes averaging a heady 38g/t gold, while historical rock-chip sampling returned values as high as an eye-watering 56.6g/t.
Right Resources completed 3039.5m of maiden diamond drilling across five holes and hole components, intersecting gold-bearing sheeted quartz veins across 70m of strike.
Initial fire assays returned 42m running 0.2g/t gold from 338m in one hole. However, subsequent testing using larger PhotonAssay samples revealed a more intriguing picture.
Revised results included 16m going 0.35g/t from 348m and 7m grading 0.48g/t from 373m.
And while the broader grades were modest, Pilot still flashed some gold teeth, with a narrow 0.2-metre interval returning a solid 6.46g/t gold from 351.5m under PhotonAssay, compared with 5g/t under conventional fire assay.
The differing assay results reinforced the company's interest in coarse, "nuggety gold", which can be notoriously difficult to measure accurately using smaller samples. The company says the larger PhotonAssay samples could provide a clearer picture of gold distribution and potentially reveal richer sections within the system.
Historical workings at Right Resources' Pilot gold project in southern NSW. Credit: File
A neighbouring hole returned a 3.7-metre hit of 0.46g/t gold, including a richer 0.5-metre section assaying 2.24g/t.
Right Resources and CODES believe the drilling has so far tested the outer reaches of the mineralised system, where gold and arsenic dominate, rather than the more prospective zone closer to the suspected source of mineralisation, where gold, bismuth, tellurium and tungsten could be concentrated.
If the geological model proves correct, the richer heart of Pilot's gold system could still be waiting for the drill bit.
Pilot also delivered preliminary metallurgical results, with reconciled gravity gold recovery of 83.57 per cent and separate whole-ore cyanide leaching achieving 89.9 per cent extraction after 24 hours.
The tests used historical mine-dump material, adding another piece to the company’s early processing investigations.
Where generations of prospectors followed quartz reefs and alluvial gold, Right Resources is aiming to reconstruct the plumbing of entire mineralising systems.
The company reported $3.8 million in cash at September 30, providing breathing room for its immediate exploration program.
Its New England project in northern NSW offers another front, with a 285-sample geochemistry program planned to refine the early-stage Rising Sun and Midnight Star gold-copper targets.
The company hopes the next round of results could prove particularly revealing.
Maiden aircore assays from Aster and Luna should help rank Blue's deeper drill targets, while Moonlight sampling and planned drilling could sharpen the picture around its priority tungsten structures.
Nova offers another target, with sulphide-bearing quartz veins mapped and initial drilling flagged for late November.
The company has secured forestry and regulatory approvals for its maiden Blue drilling program, with further work subject to site-specific requirements.
The field crew still has plenty of drilling ahead of it before management can put hard numbers around its gold and tungsten ambitions; however, early exploration and metallurgical results have given Howard and his team plenty to work with.
More than 150 years after the first gold hunters descended on Tumbarumba, Right Resources is betting the old goldfields still have a few secrets left to surrender.
While the old-timers were content to chase the yellow metal, Howard hopes their well-trodden ground might still deliver a tungsten bonus they never saw coming.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
