Small cap Focus Minerals (ASX:FML) is exploring a colossal gold project in the northeast Goldfields of Western Australia.

The ~500sqkm Laverton project includes a bunch of different targets in a historic gold mining area.

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The Karridale deposit, for example, was historically mined at super high grades.

Between 1899 and 1922,  6315 tonnes at 80.6 g/t was mined from the mining centres of Karridale, Roscommon and Bonds Find. Anything over 5g/t gold is usually considered high grade.

These days, that high grade, shallow stuff – between 20m and 40m from surface — has mostly been taken.

But this very high-grade mineralisation at Karridale is a subset of a broader, bulk tonnages style shear-hosted gold mineralisation, says Focus.

Which means there’s a lot of life in Karridale yet. Focus has just unveiled a 25 per cent boost to the Karridale resource to 672,000oz; but it’s not done yet.

The explorer has unveiled a larger 1.4moz exploration target for Karridale based on “significant areas of unclassified mineralisation” to the east and west.

This exploration target will be assessed by exploration drilling over the next 24 months.

And remember, this is just one of multiple targets at Laverton.

Check this out:

Focus Minerals Laverton Project locations. Karridale is down the bottom.

Like we said, this thing is huge.

Focus boss Zhaoya Wang says only 40 per cent of the Karridale footprint has been drill-tested.

“As we continue drilling across our broader Laverton Gold Project area, our confidence is rising that we have the potential to define a regionally significant gold project in the north-eastern Goldfields,” he says.
 

In other gold news:

Dark Horse Resources (ASX:DHR) has returned some pretty encouraging assays from its Las Opeñas project in Argentina. Highlights include 1m at 4.84 g/t gold and 349g/t silver, 23m from the surface. The company says it will proceed to phase 2 drilling at Las Opeñas. Drilling at a second Argentinean project, Cachi, is planned for later this year.