White Cliff overcomes bad weather to test WA lithium play

Despite recent unseasonal WA weather, White Cliff Minerals has showered assay labs with about 1000 soil samples from its Diemals lithium and rare earths play east of Perth and Reedy South gold project in the historic Cue goldfields region. The company is unlikely to ease its assay rate, with more than 700 samples expected from its Yinnetharra lithium and rare earths project in the Gascoyne region in the coming weeks.

White Cliff pulled 595 regional soil samples from its Diemals project, looking at nickel, copper and gold in addition to lithium and rare earths and 326 regional soil samples taken at the greater Reedy South project, focusing on lithium and rare earths in an area better known for gold.

It is expecting results early next month and plans to send in another 730 soil samples from its Yinnetharra lithium and rare earths project.

The Reedy South gold project is along the high-grade and prolific Reedy shear zone in the Cue goldfields, near Westgold’s South Emu-Triton and Paddy’s Flat mines.

White Cliff has published a mineral resource estimate for Reedy South of 779,000 tonnes at 1.7 g/t gold for 42,400 ounces, including 6600 ounces of indicated resources and 35,800 ounces of inferred resources.

The Reedy shear zone hosts many high-grade gold mines, with vertical plunging mineralisation extending to depths of 500m.

White Cliff's Diemals lithium and rare earths project comprises six almost- unexplored tenement applications in the Southern Cross belt, 185km north of Southern Cross and 75km east of Paynes Find where White Cliff is chasing nickel, copper and gold. The project is just north of the Mons Resources' nickel deposit play.

The Yinnetharra lithium and rare earths project is in two application blocks, in the Gascoyne lithium region, about 100km north-east of Gascoyne Junction and 85km south of Hastings Technology Metals’ world-class Yangibana rare earths project.

Management says it will be back out to the Abraxis and Rat Hill lithium and rare earth plays to test the as-yet unsampled western mafic contacts of the Tambourah granite because fellow explorers on the eastern side of the Tambourah granite have reported positive lithium results.  A 55-sample, first-pass run over the two projects did not yield significant results.

White Cliff Technical Director, Ed Mead says his company has a clear exploration strategy for lithium and rare earths involving reconnaissance sampling programs across multiple project areas.

Plans include sampling at Yinnetharra, where White Cliff has reviewed a lot of geophysical data and refined where it intends to focus its exploration efforts, with about 730 samples on the company’s list.

Mead says the multiple geophysical data sets from remote sensing have been acquired over almost all company projects and are now being scrutinised to fine-tune White Cliff Resources’ exploration programs.

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