Palm Springs, 30km from Halls Creek, in Western Australia's Kimberley region, now has a total resource of 5.6 million tonnes grading two grams per tonne for 357,000 ounces.

 

The resource includes an indicated 139,000oz below the historical Butchers Creek pit, which hosts the majority of the gold, and an inferred 38,000oz at the nearby Golden Crown deposit that has been restated and increased under JORC 2012 rules.

 

Managing director Andrew Tunks told MNN it was "the single most significant event for shareholders" since he arrived at Meteoric in 2018.

 

"I am very happy with our progress to date, but the big thing has been finding the old data, the original logs, drill reports, and QA/QC material," he said.

 

That gave Meteoric's resource consultant confidence in the work done in the 1990s by former owner Precious Metals Australia, which operated Palm Springs between 1994-95, extracting a reported 52,000oz at 2.1gpt, before the gold price plunged below A$500/oz, effectively killing the project given costs were $750/oz.

 

Tunks said the data was sufficiently robust so the company could cease pumping water from Butcher Creek, and skip a requirement to twin 5-10% of PMA's holes in the pit floor, saving millions of dollars and months of work.

 

With an indicated resource, it can move straight towards a prefeasibility study, although that won't commence until a two-rig program has been completed, infilling areas of the inferred resource, and extending the mineralisation to the south.

 

Butcher Creek outcrops in the north, and deepens to the south where the gold is contained within a hinge zone. Mineralisation is open at depth and down-plunge to the south.

 

Core will be used to complete further metallurgy.

 

"PMA did some tests on the sulphides, but they mined the oxide ore, and in any case, there's been a lot of advances in metallurgy in the past 25 years," Tunks said.

 

The mining studies will examine the best options for a new development.

 

"We'll open up the length of the pit, extend at depth, and push out to the south, and once we hit the economic limits, we'll look at the viability of a decline," Tunks said.

 

Meteoric has two treatment options: it can build a standalone processing plant at the site, or it may be able to toll treat at Pantoro's nearby Nicholson mill, the only gold plant in the area.

 

"Historically, ore from Nicholson was treated at Butchers Creek, so we may be able to come to an agreement," Tunks said.

 

Tunks, a veteran geologist who remembers the dark days of the late 1990s gold slump, has big dreams for the Halls Creek region, believing the province is vastly underexplored.

 

"It is very similar to the Tanami province, where there has been 10Moz produced from some great mines, and there is another 5Moz, but there has been less than 1Moz recovered from Halls Creek," he said.

 

"Halls Creek was the first place gold was discovered in WA, and it is a prospectors' paradise. The high-grade quartz veins shed nuggets, but they are not amenable to modern mining techniques, so it is well prospected, but not well explored."

 

Two decades ago, he looked at deposits in the Pilbara, such as Indee that's now owned by De Grey Mining, but they were too small and isolated, and he suggested it could be a model applicable to Palm Springs.

 

"All it takes is one person to make a leap of faith, leading to the discovery of a new type of orebody. De Grey did it with Hemi, and the same happened with Olympic Dam. It was the first iron oxide copper-gold discovery in the world, and now they are everywhere, because we know what to look for," he said.

 

"Halls Creek offers a similar opportunity."

 

Structural geologist Dr David Selly is about to spend a month in the Kimberley to assess near-mine prospects within 5km of Butcher Creek.

 

"These orebodies always occur in clusters. We know of Golden Crown, Mt Bradley is to the east and is untested, and there are historical rock chip and soil anomalies across the package," Tunks said. 

 

Together with its 260,900oz Juruena copper gold project in Brazil, where more drilling results are pending, Meteoric now had a solid resource base across two projects, Tunks said.

 

The company started the quarter with $5.2 million cash, following a $4 million raising at 5.7c, that was partially bankrolled by gold bull and 12% shareholder Tolga Kumova, who has compared the forgotten Palm Springs project to the early days at Bellevue namesake project near Kalgoorlie.

 

Meteoric shares have traded between 1.8-8.3c over the past year, and were up 4% today to 5.7c, capitalising it at $72 million.