Terrain Minerals has set its sights on two priority polymetallic targets – which evoke the style of the giant nearby Golden Grove deposit – that have been defined from mobile metal ion (MMI) geochemistry at its Smokebush project, 350km north of Perth in Western Australia.
The company says geochemical sampling at its Larins Lane prospect within Smokebush yielded a 1100m-long polymetallic anomaly in the north of the grid and a new 900m-long polymetallic anomaly at the grid’s southern extent. It is now planning to next month tear into a maiden drilling campaign at the Larins Lane targets, with permits already approved and a drill rig secured from Raglan Drilling.
The follow-up geochemical program extended the northern gold anomaly, defined during the company’s first MMI program in an area of about 700m-by-250m, and added another 400m to its south-easterly strike extent. The anomaly now measures about 1100m-by-350m and reflects combined MMI soil anomalism in nickel, copper, silver and gold, with multiple areas of overlap between the elevated elements.
In addition, south-eastwards extension of MMI sampling along the full strike of a linear magnetic signature has defined another polymetallic signature with elevated nickel, copper, gold and to a lesser extent, silver anomalism, measuring about 900m-by-400m. It appears to be open in granitoids to the south-east and lying hard up against a north-east/south-west-trending dolerite dyke.
All of the anomalism appears to have a strong association with a narrow, north-west/south-east-trending total magnetic intensity “ridge” of about 3km to 4km long and 300m to 400m wide. Management has interpreted it to reflect an Archean greenstone unit enclosed on either side by regional scale granitoids.
Terrain considers that significant areas of overlap between elevated MMI values represent the most prospective areas for further testing. It notes that copper-gold associations share similar spatial distributions with other elements, particularly silver above 4.85 parts per billion and nickel exceeding 0.39 parts per million, which it believes warrants follow-up assessment.
It sees the geology at Larins Lane as potentially being part of, or analogous to, the same Archean Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt that hosts 29Metals’ giant Golden Grove copper-gold-silver-zinc-lead mineralisation. That project’s mineral resource estimate, delivered in December last year, showed a whopping 127.9 million tonnes, with contained metal including 2.24 million tonnes of copper, 2.47 million tonnes zinc, 1.32 million ounces of gold, 78.1 million ounces of silver, 153,000 tonnes of lead and 22,000 tonnes of cobalt.
Terrain’s Smokebush project area is within the Yalgoo Mineral Field and is made up of five prospecting licences and five exploration licences. The geology of the area comprises mostly complexly-folded, regionally-metamorphosed Archaean greenstone sequence at the southern end of the Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt that has been subject to multi-phase granitoid intrusion.
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By Doug Bright
