WA Gold Limited has unearthed two promising gold trails from first-pass reconnaissance drilling at its 100 per cent-owned Bullabulling project, 30km west of Coolgardie, giving the company fresh targets in its hunt for a primary gold source.
The company drilled 41 reverse circulation (RC) holes totalling 1897 metres across two priority areas following a detailed review of historical exploration data. The widely spaced program tested whether the district-scale mineralised architecture continues beneath shallow cover into WA Gold’s ground, targeting the interpreted Bullabulling Shear Zone and a regional ultramafic contact.
The drill bit delivered clues on both fronts. The shear target returned 2m at 0.16 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 52m at the end of the hole, just 160m from a historical end-of-hole anomaly of 5m at 0.12g/t gold.
Together, the two anomalies appear to extend the known gold signature along the interpreted horizon. The new hit also straddles the fresh-rock interface, with quartz veining and two per cent pyrite adding more geological breadcrumbs pointing towards a potential primary source, according to the company.
The second trail presents the bigger geochemical footprint. It sits along a regional ultramafic contact, a geological boundary where deformation can create pathways and traps for gold-bearing fluids. Drilling returned 4m at 0.25g/t gold from 40m at the end of the hole, within a greater-than-20 parts per billion gold anomaly stretching continuously for 2.6km across three eastern drill lines.
While these grades may not necessarily set the pulses racing, the real prize at this stage is the scale and continuity of the anomaly. WA Gold’s broad reconnaissance drilling has picked up coherent gold anomalism across two prospective targets and, crucially, both key hits ended with gold still anomalous at the bottom of the holes, leaving their potential primary sources deeper down untested.
WA Gold chief executive officer Ben Pollard said: “We’re progressively unearthing the right geological clues at Bullabulling, with these new results providing encouraging vectors for the next phase of exploration.”
The company will now marry those new geochemical clues with the upcoming geophysics to fine-tune its targets before sending deeper holes after the source and testing the wider potential of its Bullabulling ground.
It has already submitted 34 one-metre samples from anomalous four-metre composites for further assay to better define the gold anomalism.
A sub-audio magnetics (SAM) survey will kick off across priority areas in September to map structures and geological contacts hidden beneath the shallow cover. The combined datasets will then guide deeper RC drilling in October across both the interpreted Bullabulling Shear Zone and regional-scale ultramafic contact.
Some 500km to the north near Wiluna, WA Gold is also gearing up for resource-development RC drilling at its 518,000-ounce Abercromby flagship project. The program will kick off as soon as a rig can be secured, with drilling anticipated before the end of August and assay results expected to flow from mid-September.
A regional land grab by Minerals 260, which expanded its holdings from 130 square kilometres to 1160 square kilometres, has left WA Gold as the only other significant independent player in the district, nestled between the 4.5-million-ounce Bullabulling system to the south and the Gekko Gold Project to the north.
The company’s broader project spans the Bullabulling North, West and East tenure blocks, centred on the Great Eastern Highway through WA’s mining heartland.
The wider greenstone trend extends for 23km and has an S-shaped structural geometry, where bends and changes in orientation can create favourable traps for gold-bearing fluids. Previous reconnaissance and historical drilling have already shown WA Gold’s side of the fence can carry high-grade gold, with near-surface hits at Bullabulling North including 2m at 18.1g/t, 12m at 2.3g/t and 4m at 10.12g/t.
With two drill-bit fronts lining up, WA Gold is setting up for a news-heavy run into the end of the year. While Abercromby chases more ounces around an established deposit, the company is following the scent of gold at Bullabulling in the shadow of a 4.5-million-ounce giant. As geophysics light up the path and deeper drilling gets set to follow, the hunt for a pay-dirt discovery is well and truly on.
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By Penny Taylor
