Completed drilling marks the start of Golden State’s lithium and gold exploration drive

Golden State completes RC drilling at the Nomad and Balla Yule prospects, targeting lithium, cobalt and nickel
Assay results from this drill program are expected early October
Aircore drilling over additional target areas at Nomad, Yule East and Balla Yule to begin over the next week

Golden State has completed reverse circulation drilling at the Nomad and Balla Yule prospects. It marks the beginning of a busy period of exploration at the broader Yule project in WA’s Pilbara.

Golden State is focused on making tier 1 gold and lithium discoveries across three large scale greenfields projects: Yule, Paynes Find and Southern Cross.

Its primary focus is the 730km² Yule, 35km from Port Hedland and just 13km from De Grey Mining’s world class Hemi gold discovery.

Previous work defined a +2km long, 800m wide bedrock lithium-caesium-rubidium anomaly at the Nomad prospect, which is overlain by a strong coherent arsenic anomaly.

Golden State managing director Mike Moore noted in May these were all the hallmarks of a lithium target, emphasising that caesium is not a very mobile element and that a pegmatitic source is likely to be close by.

The company has now drilled eight holes totalling 1,536m targeting lithium at Nomad and three reconnaissance holes totalling 523m to test for both nickel-cobalt prospectivity and lithium pegmatite intrusive potential at Balla Yule.

At Nomad, the target areas were interpreted from recent high resolution drone magnetics, detailed ground gravity surveys and previous drilling results with Golden State Mining (ASX:GSM) noting that field logging had recorded a range of mafic-ultramafic and metasedimentary rock types in addition to granitic and porphyritic felsic intrusives.

Meanwhile, while one RC hole at Balla Yule was abandoned due to difficult ground conditions, field logging of RC chips from the remaining holes recorded a range of ultramafic rock types consistent with historical drilling – where a single hole from the early 2000s returned anomalous nickel and lithium.

Assay results from this drill program are expected early October.

“The completion of RC drilling at the Nomad lithium prospect as well as drilling to assess the nickel, cobalt and lithium potential at Balla Yule is just the start of a busy phase of exploration at Yule,” managing director Mike Moore said.

Moore added the company will start aircore drilling over additional target areas at Nomad, Yule East and Balla Yule over the next week while Phase 2 soil results at the Southern Cross East gold project had identified 41 areas of interest.

District-scale hunt

There is certainly good reason for Golden State to be chasing lithium on its ground given the Pilbara is host to Albemarle and Mineral Resources’ (ASX:MIN) Wodgina lithium mine, Pilbara Minerals’ (ASX:PLS) Pilgangoora mine and Global Lithium’s (ASX:GL1) deposits.

Yule also has several gold targets in a favourable structural setting with previous drilling at Target 1 East returning a 4m intersection grading 2.3g/t gold.

Gold search

Meanwhile, the region surrounding its Southern Cross East project about 60km northeast of Southern Cross is peppered with significant gold mines and deposits.

Notable examples are the Mt Dimer mine with the company noting that most open pit mining operations in the region were developed on multiple high-grade quartz bearing ore shoots primarily hosted by granite.

Its ground remains under-explored due to the lack of outcrop, though a regolith and magnetic interpretation carried out by the company has demonstrated a structural setting in Archaean rocks considered favourable for orogenic gold prospectivity.

The company’s latest soil sampling work has identified 41 areas of interest that are being ranked in order of priority. The top two areas from the earlier Phase 1 sampling are still considered to be significant due to their proximity to structural trends showing anomalous low-level gold supported by other pathfinder elements.