As it looks to stack more gold on its 603,000-ounce Yandal project, 70km east of Wiluna, junior explorer Strickland Metals is gearing up to pass its fleet of drill rigs over its cornerstone Millrose gold system. In preparation for its drill out, the company has completed a heritage assessment and will start a magnetic survey as early as next week.
Currently, the entire 346,000-ounce Millrose resource is spread out over a 2.5km strike length and the gold mineralisation appears to be associated with a banded iron formation or, “BIF” unit.
Judging from available historical magnetic data, Strickland interprets the iron unit to extend for a combined 13km of strike.
The native title heritage survey to permit drilling activities over the prospective extensions at Millrose was completed last month. The clearance report is expected to be received within a fortnight. Once approval is received, the company will have a green light to kick its rigs into gear and drill the remainder of the strike.
Significant hits from extensional drilling thus far into the broad system include 54m at 1.8 grams per tonne gold and 95.5 metres going 2.0 g/t gold.
Given the solid drill results, Strickland decided to amend the heritage survey to focus solely on securing clearance over the northern and southern extensions at Millrose.
The explorer will run its own magnetic survey next week, designed to accurately map the banded iron formation unit and key cross-cutting structures.
Strickland says the BIF unit appears to be the key footwall marker horizon for the gold mineralisation and is highly magnetic and clearly traceable in historical magnetic datasets.
The resolution of the historical dataset is at 100m line spacings and the new ground magnetic survey will be at 25m line spacings, producing a much clearer picture.
Drilling to date has encountered structural offsets along strike, where the main ore zone has been either offset to the east or west.
Strickland believes the magnetic survey should clearly map any offsets allowing for more accurate drill target testing of the main mineralised shear structure along strike.
To expedite the drilling, Strickland will get a third rig to join the charge next month. The recruit will focus on drilling the northern and southern extensions to the existing Millrose resource. The addition of a third rig will also allow flexibility in conducting small regional exploration programs while awaiting gold assays from Millrose.
It is also eyeing a fourth rig for a 30,000m air core program in the second half of the year.
When it comes to industry-wide delays experienced in assay delivery, Strickland has been told the backlog of assays will be cleared towards the end of this month.
Whilst March’s heated prices for gold have cooled to about US$1835, it is still a good time for those in the industry as the gold price has advanced 73 per cent since its decade-low of about US$1060 in December 2015.
According to the Mineral Council of Australia’s Commodity Demand Outlook 2030 report, the gold industry employs more than 35,000 people across the 60-plus gold mines in Australia.
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By Matt Birney
