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An early mover in north-east Tasmania
Australian Resources & Investment sat down with Flynn Gold, an ASX-listed company with a suite of exciting projects in the emerging …
Australian…
Australian Resources & Investment sat down with Flynn Gold, an ASX-listed company with a suite of exciting projects in the emerging gold province of north-east Tasmania.
Flynn Gold has delivered significant exploration success at its gold projects in north-east Tasmania, highlighted by continuous high-grade assay results from the Trafalgar prospect at its Golden Ridge project.
Some of the most impressive results include 1.2m at 65 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 57.5m, including 0.5m at 143g/t gold in drill hole TFDD003; and 1.25m at 106.6g/t gold from 119.8m, including 0.7m at 152.5g/t gold in drill hole TFDD005.
In January, Flynn Gold announced drill hole TFDD005B had intersected 14.7m at 5.5g/t gold from 109.4m, including 0.6m at 109g/t gold.
These results have marked the birth of a new gold prospect not only significant to Flynn Gold but to the broader Tasmanian mining industry. And it was something Flynn Gold technical director Sam Garrett and exploration manager Sean Westbrook anticipated when they first pulled together the company’s north-east-Tasmanian assets.
“Sam and Sean identified opportunities which were overlooked as far as gold in north-east Tasmania goes,” Flynn Gold chief executive officer Neil Marston told Australian Resources & Investment.
“Sam and Sean are both Tasmanian locals – they were raised in Tasmania and have family there – so they know the background of that part of the world pretty well, and particularly after the discovery of high-grade gold in Victoria around places like Fosterville, there was a lot of encouragement to go and secure old goldfields in north-east Tasmania.”
This part of Tasmania holds a number of geological similarities with Victoria, both hosting orogenic and intrusion-related gold systems (IRGS). Victoria has several operating gold mines, including Fosterville, Costerfield and Stawell, but there are no gold operations up and running in north-east Tasmania. This is not reflective of the endowment, with north-east Tasmania still underexplored.
In fact, while $222 million was spent on exploration in the Victorian goldfields in 2021–22, approximately $32.8 million was spent on exploration in Tasmania over this period, with most of this spent on areas outside of the north-eastern part of the state.
Marston said through Garrett and Westbrook’s foresight, Flynn Gold has established an early-mover advantage in north-east Tasmania, with a 1134-square-kilometre landholding at its disposal.
“The most important thing is we’ve picked up most of the gold prospective tenure in that part of north-east Tasmania east of the Tamar River,” he said.
“Apart from some ground around the Mathinna goldfields, we’ve certainly got the rest of the ground north and south of that which has historically produced gold.
“This has given us time to gain an understanding of what the geological setting in that area is, certainly up in Portland where we were drilling initially – that looks similar to Victorian goldfields-style folding in the rocks.
“At Golden Ridge, we think we’re onto an intrusive-related gold system. That’s similar to what’s been occurring in the eastern part of the Melbourne Zone within the Victorian goldfields.”
While Flynn’s Portland gold project has signs of high-grade Fosterville-style mineralisation and has more than 20km of strike potential, Golden Ridge has shown the potential to host a large gold resource over several deposits.
Marston said as the company continues to realise the potential of its tenure, it keeps a close eye on developments in Victorian gold exploration to identify any analogies. One key takeaway is that much less deep drilling has been completed in Tasmania than Victoria.
And with deep drilling proving successful in Victoria – resulting in frequent higher-grade intersections – Marston said this could be a strategy Flynn Gold employs.
Extensive gold anomalism has been identified over 8km of strike within a granodiorite-hornfels contact zone at Golden Ridge, which remains largely unexplored.
“The Golden Ridge area is still untested to a large extent,” Marston said.
“We initially came up with some higher-grade intervals at the Brilliant prospect and have extended the gold mineralisation there.
“The next thing for us was to see if we could determine whether there was going to be some good mineralisation at the nearby Trafalgar prospect. We were testing an area where only one diamond drill hole had been drilled historically which had intersected some interesting gold numbers towards the bottom of that hole.
“Our first hole TFDD002 intersected multiple zones of veining which was very encouraging. We then expanded the program, looking to see if this mineralisation extended over 200m or more of strike length.”
Marston said this strategy began with drill holes TFDD003 and TFDD004, which drilled to the west and detected some very high-grade mineralisation, before TFDD005, which drilled 100m to the east, delivered the high-grade results Flynn Gold was hoping for.
“It really excited us when we were seeing grades up to 152 grams per tonne over 0.7 metres,” he said. “This is certainly confirming the overall potential of the area.
“We also did some RC (reverse circulation) drilling last year – a dozen holes for about 1400 metres over three prospect areas which was targeting some soil or rock chip sampling that looked interesting. We had some success on each of those targets as well, which is a very good sign.”
Marston said the RC drilling to date had confirmed the 8km of strike length identified at Golden Ridge and suggested that a camp-style gold system over this extent could contain significant gold mineralisation.
“We’ve been really encouraged that the work to date has validated the original idea and we now need to do more work around where we’re having some success at the moment, as well as testing some other areas of potential,” Marston said.
“It’s multi-faceted program going forward at Golden Ridge.”
In March, Flynn Gold announced it had raised $3.7 million via a $1.3 million placement in December 2022 and a $2.4 million entitlement offer in February. The company’s cash at bank at the end of February was $5.5 million.
Marston said this puts Flynn Gold in a strong position ahead of its Phase 2 drill program at Trafalgar.
“The company is now fully funded for its upcoming exploration programs, with the high-priority Phase 2 drilling at the Trafalgar prospect expected to commence within two weeks,” he said in a March ASX announcement.
“A short diamond drilling program at the Portland project is already underway to test the Popes prospect before a rig heads back to Trafalgar.
“Processing of core from Phase 1 drilling at Trafalgar is progressing well with several batches of samples submitted to the laboratory, meaning further drilling results are still to come.”
Through a multi-faceted exploration program at Golden Ridge and diamond drilling at Portland, as well as its emerging projects in the Pilbara region of WA – which have shown lithium potential – there’s plenty to be excited about at Flynn Gold in 2023 and beyond.
Investors can expect a frequent stream of announcements and plenty more high-grade drill results as Flynn capitalises on its early-mover advantage in north-east Tasmania.
This feature appeared in the April 2023 issue of Australian Resources & Investment.
