Junior gold explorer Brightstar Resources has amassed a solid war chest from its oversubscribed capital raising and it plans to put the money to work immediately in a 10,000m RC and diamond blitz at its flagship Cork Tree Well gold project near Laverton in WA. The company plans to explore extensions to known mineralisation to grow its resource base in addition to investigating the prospectivity of early-stage targets nearby.
Remote sensing is also on the cards at Cork Tree Well with the aim of improving targeting particularly where palaeochannels are believed to have interrupted the geochemical signals.
A series of short but impactful air core programs are also in the pipeline to test for anomalism around historic mine sites and in areas where prospecting has identified surface mineralisation. The targeted areas have all had little modern exploration – with the majority deemed ineffective by Brightstar.
Cork Tree Well produced some outstanding results during 2021 RC programs, including a 26m hit at 2.97 grams per tonne gold from 111m downhole, 5m at 5.01 g/t gold from 70m and 12m at 3.47 g/t gold among a myriad others.
Mineralisation remains open along strike and down dip, with possible parallel lode structures remaining to be properly tested with the drill bit.
Upcoming work will primarily focus on the northern end of the known gold system, with a number of holes also pencilled in to determine the potential for parallel or splay lodes.
Exploration has also been progressing at the Brightstar South project that recently experienced the pointy end of the air core rig with a 2000m program completed in March with assays pending.
One of the targets for upcoming drilling is the Hawks Nest prospect that has a solid reputation in the Laverton district for its production. Brightstar believes the bedrock has not been effectively tested below historical surficial gold finds, with the potential to find a primary mineralisation source lurking below.
Another prospect soon to feel the bite of the air core blade is Comet Well. Outcrop is generally poor covered mostly by a thin veneer of transported material and consists of a range of prospective rock types from felsic intrusives through to ultramafics with sedimentary horizons
Brightstar identified four priority targets at Comet Well that will bear the initial brunt of drilling, with other targets currently being reviewed and possibly tested after the higher priority areas.
The company looks to be breathing some real life back into the Cork Tree Well project area that had inexplicably not experienced any follow-up drilling since 2012. With further drilling soon and a flurry of new targets in the woodworks – news flow may start coming thick and fast over the coming months for the explorer.
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By Matt Birney
