Terrain Minerals is off and running at its promising Smokebush gold project in WA. Drilling is now underway over the Monza and T13 prospects following up on some encouraging historical drill hits and high-grade sampling, including 2 metres at 11.3 g/t gold.
The Smokebush gold project is located in the Murchison goldfield of Western Australia and is easily accessed from the state’s capital city of Perth via the Great Northern highway. It sits 65km west of the historical mining centre at Paynes Find.
Terrain farmed into the project in December 2019 and can earn an 80 per cent interest in the tenure by spending $250,000 over a two-year period.
The Smokebush project covers more than 1,700 hectares of prospective gold ground including a number of old mining shafts and diggings dating back to the early 20th century. The project area has yet to be properly tested utilising modern exploration techniques.
Interestingly, the Smokebush project surrounds Tungsten Mining’s mammoth Mt Mulgine tungsten-gold project which boasts a resource of 259 million tonnes grading 0.11% tungsten oxide, 0.12 g/t gold and 5 g/t silver. Tungsten Mining is currently working towards delivering its maiden pre-feasibility study for the project in the latter half of this year.
The development of Mt Mulgine will no doubt deliver significant synergies for the two companies. Tungsten Mining has already begun upgrading the infrastructure in the region and is looking to build a processing plant within 5km of the Smokebush project, providing yet another incentive for accelerating exploration over the various gold targets in the highly prospective tenure.
The company’s maiden drilling program at Smokebush will follow up on historical drilling at Monza and more recent reconnaissance work by Terrain. Previous exploration at the project has consistently returned high-grade gold results including rock chips from the T13 showing grades of over half an ounce to the tonne gold – numbers that require closer investigation.
Terrain has mobilised renown contractors Orlando Drilling to site, with a 1,000 metres of reverse circulation, or RC drilling now on the cards as the company kicks off systematic drill testing of the deeper extents of the Monza and T13 mineralisation in the northern tenement area.
Terrain is also cultivating a number of other prospects throughout the project area creating a growing pipeline of targets for testing across the fertile gold terrane. Initial work at the T16, T16W, Hurley and Wildflower prospects is building a compelling suite of targets. Forensic exploration has revealed that historic drilling at Wildflower included an eye-catching shallow drill intercept of 15 metres at 1.4 g/t gold from only 10 metres depth that has yet to be followed up. The company continues to work up these targets as part of the ongoing exploration program.
Terrain’s exploration at Monza and T13 is following up on the high-grade gold results through Smokebush’s under-explored terrane and with gold hovering at close to US$2,000 an ounce it could be a case of the company being ‘in the right place, at the right time’ as the results from the current drilling program are received over the coming weeks.
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