- 01Three 2km+ gold trends at Illaara.
- 02Central intercept: 30m @0.2 g/t from 90m.
- 03Follow-up drilling 25-50m spacing.
- 04Illaara is underexplored WA greenstone belt.
Dreadnought Resources (ASX: DRE) has identified three distinct gold-bearing trends, each exceeding two kilometres in strike, in the first 92 wide-spaced air core holes of a 35,000-metre drilling campaign at its Illaara project in Western Australia.
The trends, which sit along the CRA Homestead anomaly discovered in the late-1980s by CRA Exploration, contain strong orogenic gold pathfinders (silver-arsenic-bismuth-antimony-tellurium-tungsten), demonstrating the scale of the emerging system.
Dreadnought’s campaign comprises a total of 500 aircore holes spaced up to 200m apart along lines that are 400m apart and is targeting broad anomalism associated with a potential large-scale gold discovery.
On the central anomaly, best intercepts included 30m at 0.2 grams per tonne gold from 90m, which is 800m along strike from a previous intercept of 18m at 0.2g/t from 114m.
Underexplored Greenstone Belt
Illaara is one of the most underexplored greenstone belts in WA’s Yilgarn Craton and one of the last to be subject to systematic air core drilling, considered a relatively cheap and quick method to explore for gold over vast areas.
In 2020, Dreadnought drilled a single fenceline of three reverse circulation holes at CRA Homestead to test a magnetic anomaly coincident with gold-in-soil anomalism.
Although it identified deeper-than-anticipated weathering, the program also intersected gold anomalism associated with intense shearing hosted within a highly prospective sericite-sulphide-carbonate altered sheared sequence of mafic volcanics and interflow sediments.
The current campaign is designed to follow the prospective shear horizon with broad-spaced 400m x 100m drilling.
Maiden Air Core Campaign
Managing director Dean Tuck said the campaign was the first air core work undertaken at the Illaara greenstone belt, which was previously under iron-ore producer control and is adjacent to multi-million-ounce belts with decades of gold production.
“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,” he said.
Given the encouraging early results, the company has planned a follow-up program across all three trends later this month with drill spacing reduced to between 25m and 50m.
“These are the sorts of programs that lead to major discoveries and we look forward to following up on these gold trends imminently.”
Results from the company’s first-pass drilling at the Black Oak target are also expected sometime this month.
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