Terrain ramps up gold-lithium drilling at Smokebush

Terrain Minerals has kicked off a second round of reverse-circulation (RC) drilling for gold and lithium at its 100 per cent-owned Smokebush project in Western Australia.

Management says its project features many promising exploration targets hat it is testing in a rapid, methodical and systemic manner in its mission to make a company-defining discovery. It believes the play may be part of the same greenstone belt that hosts the renowned Golden Grove mine.

The phase-two drilling campaign that is now underway is expected to be comprised of 12 RC drillholes for about 1340m of work to target chargeability gold anomalies and pegmatites. And the program has a dual-commodity focus.

Firstly, Terrain plans to drill six holes targeting gold and base-metal mineralisation hosted within the chargeability anomalies at the project’s Paradise City, Hurley, Monza and Mirja prospects. Induced-polarisation (IP) geophysical surveys conducted across the project during the first half of this year successfully returned multiple, positive chargeability anomalies at each of the prospects.

Secondly, phase-two drilling will continue to test the lithium mineralisation potential of outcropping pegmatites observed at the Monza and Hurley prospects, with a further six planned holes to be drilled into the northern pegmatites.

The program follows the completion of the company’s 11-hole phase-one campaign last month that intersected multiple zones of pegmatites. Of the 11 holes drilled, 10 intercepted pegmatites, with logged pegmatites including a 22m zone and an 11m zone.

Assays to determine the widths and grades of the visual mineralisation in preliminary geological logging are with the laboratory and are due back late next month or in early September.

Terrain is also undertaking a follow-up mobile metal ion (MMI) soil-sampling program to test the southern continuation of the copper-in-soil geochemical anomaly at the project’s Larin’s Lane prospect that is currently known to span 600m by 350m. A large, new gold-in-soil anomaly of about 700m by 250m was also identified in the previous soil-sampling program in the northern part of the interpreted remanent Archean greenstone unit at Larin’s Lane.

Geology at Larin’s Lane is interpreted as potentially being part of the Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt, which hosts 29Metals’ world-class Golden Grove copper-gold-silver-zinc-lead mine.

Terrain’s dual gold-lithium exploration plans are being boosted by supportive commodity markets, with the gold price trading not far off all-time highs, while lithium is staging a recovery after falling from its own all-time high late last year.

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