White Cliff Minerals has secured a strategic position in the multi-million-ounce Murchison goldfield of WA, joining a growing rush of explorers looking to stake their claim in the resurgent gold mining terrane. The company has completed the acquisition of the Reedy South project stamping its foot on over 156 square kilometres of auriferous tenure adjacent to the Reedy’s gold mine.
White Cliff is a gold and nickel explorer with a suite of highly prospective projects across the goldfields of Western Australia. The company’s tenure is largely centred on the Laverton region in the Eastern Goldfields of WA, approximately 250km north-east of Kalgoorlie, where it holds a swag of projects in one of the world’s most fertile mineral provinces. It also recently acquired the Midas copper-gold project in the Paterson province of northern WA.
The company’s primary focus now, however, has shifted west onto the Reedy South project, adjacent to Westgold’s prolific Reedy’s gold mine.
White Cliff’s Reedy South project is located 600km north-east of Perth in the Murchison goldfield. The tenure is composed of three exploration licenses and, importantly, a granted mining lease that covers more than a kilometre of the gold-bearing Reedy’s Shear Zone, or “RSZ”. The new project area lies between Meekatharra and Cue, in a region that has produced a wealth of significant gold mines with a rich history of production dating back more than a century.
The Murchison goldfield was a prolific producer of the yellow metal in the 1980s and 1990s. The advent of large-scale open-pit mining in the 1980s saw a wave of development over the massive field, stretching from Mt Gibson mine in the south to the Bluebird operations at Meekatharra. This period also saw the development of the rich gold lodes of the Cue goldfields including Cuddingwarra, Day Dawn and importantly, the Reedy’s mines.
Whilst the focus of gold mining in WA in recent years has turned to the world-class deposits of the Eastern Goldfields, north of Kalgoorlie, a rogue group of explorers and miners have broken ranks and headed back into the Murchison. The likes of Silver Lake Resources have revitalised the Deflector operations near Yalgoo and Westgold Resources has been rampaging through the goldfield and developing a plethora of neglected mines and discoveries, including the Reedy’s operations, and reaping the rewards of a gold price that continues to bump along near record highs.
The Reedy’s gold mine is composed of historical North Rand, Rand, Triton and Emu open-pits, most of which were developed in the 1990s, and Westgold’s new Triton underground operations, which, according to White Cliff, last year produced more than 94,000 ounces of gold. In total, the Reedy’s mining centre has produced more than 1.6 million ounces of gold.
Whilst White Cliff’s holdings at Reedy’s South is largely peripheral to the mining area, it does have its hands on some very interesting tenure including the mining lease M 20/446, just 600m south of the Triton underground. This granted lease covers over a kilometre of the southern extensions to the Reedy’s Shear Zone and hosts several sets of historical workings including the high-grade Diorite Queen, Pegasus and King Cole gold mines.
Previous drilling of over this strategic tenement has delivered an abundance of high-grade gold intercepts in shallow drilling including 7m at 10.86 g/t gold from 30m, 12m at 5.26 g/t gold from 34m and 4m at 7.68 g/t gold from 36m. White Cliff Minerals is now looking to rapidly capitalise on these results, and with a database of over 168 drill holes and 9,400m of drilling, has engaged industry experts Auralia Mining Consultants to estimate a maiden resource for the new acquisition with that estimate due in the coming weeks.
White Cliff will utilise the new resource to assist in targeting the high-grade extensions to the RSZ, with a drilling contractor already engaged and set to commence 2,000m of reverse circulation and diamond drilling in the last week of October.
In what appears to be a canny transaction on behalf of White Cliff, the company picked up the Reedy’s South tenure for $400,000 and 30 million ordinary shares at a deemed value of $0.01 per share. The terms agreed to translate to a modest $700,000 valuation but deliver White Cliff 100 per cent of the strategic holding 40km north of Cue.
White Cliff has the bit between its teeth and is wasting no time as it hurtles towards a maiden resource over it’s new, high-grade Reedy’s South acquisition. With the company’s geological team heading into the field in the coming weeks and drilling to follow soon after, there looks to be a very interesting lead up to Christmas for this agile gold explorer.
Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
