Strickland Metals has officially kicked off a heritage survey that is focused on large-scale prospects at its Yandal and Earaheedy projects in central Western Australia, where the company has identified two priority drill targets.
Management believes successful clearance of the survey will allow it to expand on an ongoing air-core (AC) drilling program at its Horse Well prospect, with both new targets offering tier-one discovery potential based on their large scale.
The Great Western prospect sits within the Yandal project and lies about 5km west of Horse Well in the Yandal-Millrose greenstone belt, which the company says represents a potentially large-scale gold target.
The Rabbit Well base metal prospect forms part of the Earaheedy project and sits about 10km north-east of Horse Well within the Earaheedy Basin and on contact with the Yilgarn Craton that is considered a major target for copper, zinc, lead and silver.
Strickland recently ran a 3D induced-polarisation (IP) survey over Rabbit Well, which is directly along strike from the company’s Iroquois project and is notable for its 2.7km-long gravity anomaly that coincides with base metal anomalism. Management says the preliminary results from the survey are extremely encouraging.
The company says a recent 2D IP survey confirms Great Western as a compelling drill target that potentially represents a large-scale, high-grade orogenic gold mineralised system at the site that sits 85km north-east of the WA town of Wiluna.
A diamond drill rig has been secured and is expected to be on-site as early as next month to test targets at Horse Well, in addition to Rabbit Well and Great Western once heritage clearance is complete. The heritage survey is expected to last about five days.
Strickland Metals chief executive officer Andrew Bray said: “With most of the key clearances already in place for Horse Well, successful completion of the survey will allow the Company to test two additional high priority prospects at Great Western and Rabbit Well. Both targets offer tier-1 type discovery potential given their large scale. The targets, in combination with the ongoing Horse Well program, demonstrate Strickland’s flexibility to exploit multiple avenues to achieve significant exploration success for shareholders.”
Management also has a reverse-circulation (RC) rig arriving at the site in coming weeks, which will be used to test the Marwari prospect, where the company’s initial discovery produced solid figures with a 31m hit grading 5.6 grams per tonne gold from 72m, including an 8m intercept at 4.2g/t. The RC campaign will also test the recent Konik discovery where drilling revealed intercepts of 4m at 1.7g/t gold from 2m in near-surface laterite and an impressive 58m at 1.7g/t gold from 17m, including 10m at 4.2g/t gold. The Konik and Marwari prospects were both identified from the current AC campaign at Horse Well.
The ongoing drilling is part of a 40,000m AC campaign aimed at testing Horse Well, which holds a mineral resource of 5.77 million tonnes at 1.4g/t gold for 257,000 ounces and includes 109,000 gold ounces at the company’s Dusk ‘til Dawn deposit.
Management says it remains well-funded for its ongoing exploration at Horse Well following its success at the nearby Millrose gold project that Strickland recently sold to neighbouring gold-mining giant Northern Star Resources.
The company raked in an initial cash deposit of $2 million from Northern Star for Millrose, before netting an additional $39 million in cash and was also issued 1.5 million fully-paid ordinary shares from the high-profile buyer in a deal worth about $61 million.
With plenty of cash to splash on its proposed and ongoing drill campaigns and assays still pending from its AC program, Strickland appears to be making significant progress at its Yandal and Earaheedy operations.
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By Michael Philipps
