
Dreadnought Resources identifies three gold-bearing trends over 2km each in first air core drilling at Illaara; follow-up with tighter spacing planned for later this month.
Dreadnought Resources has identified three gold-bearing trends, each extending more than two kilometres, in the first 92 holes of a 35,000-metre air core campaign at its Illaara project in Western Australia.
The trends sit along the CRA Homestead anomaly, first picked up by CRA Exploration in the late 1980s. They carry strong orogenic gold pathfinders – silver, arsenic, bismuth, antimony, tellurium and tungsten – pointing to a large-scale system, the company said.
Best intercepts on the central anomaly include 30 metres at 0.2 grams per tonne gold from 90 metres. That hole sits 800 metres along strike from an earlier intercept of 18 metres at 0.2 g/t from 114 metres.
Illaara sits in one of the most underexplored greenstone belts in the Yilgarn Craton. It was previously under iron-ore producer control and has never seen systematic air core drilling, a cheap and fast method for covering large areas.
Dreadnought's current campaign calls for 500 holes spaced 200 metres apart on lines 400 metres apart. The goal is to test broad anomalism that could host a major gold discovery.
Managing director Dean Tuck said the early results exceeded expectations.
"Our first-pass, wide-spaced drilling is off to a fantastic start with the CRA Homestead anomaly extended to over 2km and open to the south where the rig is currently drilling and two other large-scale anomalies also identified, further highlighting the scale of the system."
The company has already planned a follow-up program across all three trends later this month. Drill spacing will tighten to between 25 and 50 metres.
"These are the sorts of programs that lead to major discoveries," Tuck said.
Results from first-pass drilling at the Black Oak target are also due this month.
Dreadnought's earlier work at the Stinger discovery showed the company can move quickly from anomaly to resource. The Illaara results suggest a similar path may be forming, though it's early.
The Yilgarn Craton is one of the world's richest gold provinces, hosting multi-million-ounce belts adjacent to Illaara. Systematic air core drilling has been the key to unlocking several of those deposits. Dreadnought is now applying the same approach to a belt that has been largely ignored.
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