Dart trebles gold-rich Queensland ground as ore price surges

Dart Mining has tripled its Queensland tenure by grabbing a 320-square-kilometre exploration lease next to its Triumph project in the gold-antimony-rich New England Orogen, as the precious yellow metal’s price continues to soar.

The company has this morning confirmed that it has applied for the new exploration permit for ground that borders Triumph, which lies 50km south of the central Queensland town of Gladstone. Management’s interest has been largely driven by the proximity of the lease to historical mines, such as the Ubobo Creek antimony mine, and the geological similarities to areas that have produced gold-antimony mineralisation.

Fieldwork being conducted at Dart Mining’s newly-acquired Triumph gold project in Queensland.

Notably, the New England Orogen is known for intrusion-related gold systems and hosts significant gold-antimony resources, including the Hillgrove mine that sits 1000km to the north and holds more than 1 million ounces of gold and 37,800 tonnes of antimony. The permit area, showing similar geology for gold-antimony veins, has been relatively underexplored by modern techniques, offering Dart a fresh opportunity to capitalise on its potential.

‘We are excited by the intrusion-related gold and vein-hosted gold-antimony prospectivity of the ground and the almost total lack of modern exploration.’

Dart Mining chairman James Chirnside

Dart Mining chairman James Chirnside said: “We have moved quickly to peg additional prospective ground adjacent to our advanced Triumph Gold Project. We are excited by the intrusion-related gold and vein-hosted gold-antimony prospectivity of the ground and the almost total lack of modern exploration.”

Chirnside says Queensland’s favourable prospectivity for million-ounce-plus gold deposits will provide an “important strategic complement” to the company’s Victorian orogenic gold and porphyry projects.

The Triumph project is already an advanced exploration site, hosting an inferred resource of 118,000 ounces of gold. To date, more than $8 million has been spent on the deposit, giving Dart the benefit of only having to conduct infill drilling to convert the resource into a measured category.

Additionally, a further 44 holes covering 3695m of drilling are yet to be included into the resource model.

With plans to kick off a drilling program by November, using its own rigs, the company is looking to extend the current resource both laterally and at depth, with a focus on intrusion-related gold systems.

The acquisition of the Triumph project marked Dart’s first foray into an advanced gold system in Queensland. Remarkably, when the company purchased the project from ASX-listed Sunshine Metals in August, it only paid $2 million in cash and shares, translating into a price of $16.96 per ounce of gold.

The deal, however, would appear to be even cheaper given that the accompanying silver mineralisation, which is a key component of the ore and is generally present in a ratio of one to two-times the gold content, has not been included in the project’s resource estimate, nor in the acquisition price.

In the past year, gold prices have surged 35 per cent. It is currently trading near all-time highs at about AU$3870 and the price has risen some AU$100 an ounce alone since Dart made its latest deal. So, by all measures, it seems the company has managed to nab a bargain.

By further increasing its exploration acreage in a gold-rich region by 200 per cent in a single transaction, Dart has given itself every chance of being able to leverage into the ever-rising price for the yellow metal.

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