White Cliff Minerals has wrapped up the heritage survey over its 100 per cent owned McCaskill Hill and Cracker Jack prospects, with further sampling and drilling planned for the wider Reedy South Gold Project. The company is planning to assemble a number of mineable ore bodies in the Reedy’s South Gold Project area, which can collectively underpin commercial operations.
White Cliff is looking to follow up on highly encouraging rock chip and geochemistry sampling results from previously untested areas, in addition to testing the historic workings of the Pegasus and King Cole mines with the drill bit.
White Cliff Minerals Technical Director, Ed Mead said:“I am pleased we have been able to complete the heritage survey this late in the year, which now sets us up for drilling in January 2022. I look forward to the maiden shallow-RC drill program to test the anomalies identified to date at McCaskill Hill, Cracker Jack and Pegasus.”
According to the company, a number of rock chip samples at Cracker Jack produced values exceeding one gram per tonne gold and displayed strongly elevated levels of bismuth, molybdenum and tungsten. Soil samples also pointed to potential gold mineralisation.
White Cliff said it was looking at a potential 650 metre strike length with gold anomalism recorded along the eastern margin of the Cracker Jack banded iron formation, or “BIF” whilst the western margin of the eastern BIF remains entirely untested.
The planned McCaskill drilling will target the strong gold responses along margins of the BIF units in the central area of McCaskill’s and follow-up on the results from exploration previously conducted by former explorer Gold Mines of Australia near the southern limits of the BIF units.
Work programs have been approved by WA regulators for the Cracker Jack, McCaskill Hill and Pegasus projects with successful heritage surveys now completed. Whilst one final heritage report which remains pending, the company is chomping at the bit to get cracking with a drill rig already locked in place in anticipation of a start date late January.
The Reedy South Project covers 272 square kilometres of the highly prospective Cue goldfields, centred mostly on the southern portion of the prolific Reedy Shear Zone within the Meekatharra-Wydgee greenstone belt.
The project comprises one mining lease covering the historic underground Pegasus and King Cole mine workings, a granted exploration and prospecting license and four exploration license applications, located around 80km south of Meekatharra.
Steady progress has also been made at White Cliff’s Yinnetharra lithium and rare earths exploration project, some 100km northeast of the Gascoyne Junction in Western Australia where pegmatite dykes are currently being tested.
A first-pass field trip to Yinnetharra focussed on 15 sites identified through satellite imagery and historical Geological Survey of Western Australia, or “GSWA”, sampling programs.
The three day survey sampled rock chips which have now been sent to ALS Laboratories to test for a range of pegmatitic and related elements.
The GSWA survey yielded strong cerium hits as high as 332 parts per million, cerium, regarded by Geoscience Australia to be one of the most abundant rare earth elements.
The White Cliff exploration program targeting rare earths, gold and lithium is gradually taking shape and market watchers will be looking forward to further results from these early encouraging surveys.
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By Matt Birney
