Terrain Minerals has wheeled in a reverse circulation (RC) drill rig to probe the potential bedrock source of gold discovered in the supergene zone during air core drilling at its Wildflower gold project in WA’s Mid West region.
The 16-hole drill program is a follow up to the recent successful 72-hole air core program for 1710m recently conducted across its gold prospects, which unveiled a potential new supergene gold discovery with a 9m hit grading 1.17 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.
Other air core sniffs in the supergene zone to be followed up in the campaign include a 42m intersection grading 0.11 g/t gold right from surface.
Terrain is now looking for the source of that surface mineralisation.
The company will utilise a RC drill rig for its planned 2150m program, with nine holes to be pummelled into its Cota (T16West), T16 and Wildflower prospects to test newly identified north-west shear zones in the area.
A further six holes will continue to test the Monza and Lightning targets with modelling suggesting a possible new structural model for the project’s northern section.
Management says one “twin hole” will also be sunk into its promising Larin’s Lane gallium project for metallurgical samples.
The Wildflower project, which sits about 350km northeast of Perth and 65km west of the historic township of Payne’s Find, represents the southwestern section of the company’s greater Smokebush project just south of Warriedar Resources’ Ricciardo gold deposit.
It is also close to Australian-based producer Red 5’s high-grade underground Rothsay gold mine.
The company’s three targets in the southwestern section comprise Cota (T16West), T16 and Wildflower and all sit within about 3.2km of each other.
Along with the Monza and Lightning prospects to the north at the project, the targets all combine under the newly designated Wildflower gold project.
Terrain’s Larin’s Lane gallium project sits on the eastern portion of its Smokebush license ground.
Management says its first round of air core drilling at Cota discovered what it interprets as supergene mineralisation, with the 9m, 1.17g/t gold hit from 30m also including a 3m slice at a higher grade 2.61g/t gold from 33m.
The drilling also unearthed additional gold anomalism with an 18m stretch returning 0.14g/t from 42m.
The company is pursuing three historical gold and arsenic anomalies that were identified within Wildflower back in 1983.
The anomalies were untested until the September air core drilling campaign when it intercepted the Cota gold mineralisation when testing one of the anomalous zones.
Management believes the best result at Cota is significant and may relate to a shallow supergene oxide zone on top of a possible gold-hosting, north-east trending shear.
It says and the supergene intercept may suggest a nearby primary gold source.
The Wildflower target also shows considerable soil gold anomalism from historic sampling, with some results of more than 100 parts per billion.
An historic rotary air blast hole put down into the centre of the anomalism jagged an impressive 15m grading 1.49g/t gold from a depth of 10m.
A further six holes planned for Monza and Lightning may prove interesting too due to previous results from maiden drilling that show encouraging signs of worthwhile gold mineralisation there.
Monza produced 4m going 4.46g/t gold from 51m and 7m at 2.72g/t from 25m, while Lightning returned a 2m hit going 6.22g/t gold from 61m and a 1m slice at 5.94g/t gold from 82m.
The Wildflower project is surrounded by major projects including Warriedar, Rothsay and the Scuddles-Golden Grove gold-silver-base metals project.
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By Craig Nolan
