Trek Metals goes boldly to NT and QLD in the hunt for conglomerate gold

One ASX-listed junior has taken the hunt for conglomerate gold to the Northern Territory and Queensland with its application for several new tenements.

Base metals explorer Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) is now targeting Witwatersrand-style conglomerate hosted gold deposits on tenements it has pegged near its Lawn Hill zinc-lead project, which lies on the border of the NT and Queensland.

The Witwatersrand Basin is a South African geological formation that houses the world’s biggest known gold reserves, producing 2 billion ounces or about half of gold ever mined.

The deposits are similar to those under exploration by several juniors in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, which has had investors hot under the collar for the past few months.

Trek Metals shares over the past year. Source: Investing.com

Trek pointed out a number of similarities between the Westmoreland conglomerate in the Northern Territory and Queensland and the Witwatersrand gold deposits.

Past drilling of the Westmoreland conglomerate has returned intersections of gold mineralisation that was associated with uranium-bearing minerals and pyrite, an iron sulphide, which is consistent with Witwatersrand mineralisation.

“Although gold exploration has not been a focus for Trek, our work interrogating the historic data and research for copper-cobalt-zinc potential at our Lawn Hill project has delivered a very real opportunity in existing tenement applications and provided the impetus to increase our NT footprint,” managing director Bradley Drabsch said.

Trek has increased its landholding to 3610 sq km, which has about 100 sq km of prospective stratigraphy.

The grant of the tenements in the Northern Territory is subject to successful negotiations with traditional owners in the region. Trek is currently in talks and meetings are scheduled for the first quarter next year.