After unseasonal rains delayed commencement of Thomson Resources’ (ASX: TMZ) (OTCQB: TMZRF) drilling programme at its 100% owned projects in the Lachlan Fold Belt, New South Wales, the company is finally preparing to move a rig to site.
Due to unseasonal heavy rainfall in the Lachlan Fold Belt project area during November and January, it had not been possible until now to bring the contracted drilling rig onto site to commence the planned drilling programme.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s statistics show that the month of November 2021 saw 166mm of rain at Ardlethan (against a long term mean of 40.8mm) and in January 2022 saw 138.3mm of rain at Ardlethan (against a long term mean of 43.6mm).
However, the drill rig has now been mobilised to site with drilling about to commence at the company’s 100% owned Bygoo Tin project, located in the Lachlan Fold Belt in New South Wales.
“This has been a very frustrating summer all around with the La Nina event producing extraordinary unseasonal rains which have simply made it impossible to get on the ground on the Lachlan Fold Belt projects and increased the water management work in our New England Fold Belt projects as well,” Executive Chairman, David Williams, said.
“It is great to finally get on the ground at the Bygoo Tin Project and follow up on those outstanding results from the 2021 drilling.
“The Bygoo Tin Project continues to produce great exploration results and we look forward to moving towards defining a maiden Mineral Resource Estimate for Bygoo this year.”
The first target in the Bygoo Tin Project drilling campaign will be the major new discovery from last year 300m to the northwest of the main area of drilling.
Within a broad zone – 118m at 0.43% Sn from 57m depth – several higher-grade zones occur in BNRC69 including 19m at 1.0% Sn from 87m.
The higher-grade zone contains intervals of quartz rich, tourmaline absent greisen as well as the more common tourmaline bearing greisen.
The geometry of this zone is unknown, but it occurs in the cropped paddock, 60m northeast of a line of shallow old workings now reclaimed by bushland.
An initial hole, BNRC67, was drilled to test the strike extension of these workings and yielded a weak tourmaline bearing greisen at the target contact of the Ardlethan Granite intrusive contact into older rhyolite with just 3m at 0.1% Sn.
Given the presence of strong greisen a decision was made to drill a second hole, BNRC69, to make sure the strike extension was fully tested, and this resulted in the discovery.
Very little is known about the old workings in this area and no historic production is reported. The drilling will test underneath the workings as well as test extensions of the mineralisation into the cropped paddock to the northwest.
Drilling will then test the second new discovery made last year, closer and sub-parallel to the Main Zone (BNRC73 – 23m at 1.4% Sn), as well as the Main Zone itself.
Further drilling plans are in place for drilling at the company’s Harry Smith Gold project as well as other prospects in the region.
For further information please visit: https://www.thomsonresources.com.au/
