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Rowena Duckworth
Red Metal Limited has taken its first meaningful move in chasing gold potential at its Pardoo project in Western Australia’s highly prospective Pilbara district after early drilling picked up subtle, although encouraging chemical clues that point towards possible gold hiding in the deeper basement rocks.
The company completed five wide-spaced reverse circulation (RC) holes for 1,098 metres across two geophysical magnetic targets, Pardoo 2 and Pardoo 3, testing for Hemi-style gold mineralisation beneath extensive younger sedimentary cover.
While no ore-grade gold was intersected in basement rocks, assays revealed weakly anomalous gold values in the cover sequences immediately above the basement in all drill holes — a result that has caught the company’s attention.
At Pardoo 2, drilling hit a string of mafic and intermediate volcanic rocks with intermittent quartz diorite intrusions hiding below roughly 90 metres of younger sedimentary cover. Although no strongly magnetic rocks were encountered and the source of the magnetism remains unresolved, the geochemistry told a more intriguing story with arsenic and antimony sniffs – elements commonly associated with gold.
At Pardoo 3, the drill bit threw up mafic volcanic rocks, including a magnetic ultramafic horizon lurking below 100 metres of cover, finally explaining the magnetic feature. As with Pardoo 2, basement gold grades were not economic, but anomalous gold values were consistently recorded in the sedimentary cover immediately above the basement contact.
Notably, on both drill traverses, the gold tenor within the cover sequence increased towards the southeast. Red Metal believes this pattern may be providing a geochemical trail, hinting at nearby basement-hosted gold mineralisation, rather than representing mineralisation in its own right.
Supporting this interpretation, trace element data from the basement rocks show that gold-loving arsenic and antimony also increased running to the southeast. These pathfinder elements are considered particularly relevant in intrusion-related and orogenic settings, including those linked to the Hemi structural corridor.
The Pardoo project lies within the covered extension of the Hemi structural corridor, a region that has emerged as one of Australia’s most exciting gold provinces following the discovery of the world-class 10-million -ounce Hemi gold deposit, now owned by Northern Star.
The Hemi discovery is an intrusion-hosted form of gold mineralisation, new to the Pilbara region. It has a scale of mineralisation not previously encountered in the Mallina Basin, with the elusive yellow metal hosted in a series of intrusions associated with stringer – and disseminated-sulphide-rich zones.
Significantly, regional magnetic imagery clearly shows a continuation of this structural corridor through the Pardoo tenement, placing Red Metal’s ground right in the middle of a highly prospective geological setting. Adding to its credentials, the project also sits on the margin between granite intrusions and greenstone rocks within the Mallina Basin. This is exactly the same geological environment that hosts the gold-bearing intrusions of the De Grey Group.
Red Metal’s reading of the assay data suggests the increasing gold and pathfinder element tenor may be vectoring towards mineralisation developed along the granite–greenstone contact at depth.
With these early signs now identified, management is considering a follow-up program to assess gold potential further towards the southeast along a roughly three-kilometre portion of the sheared granite–greenstone contact.
Red Metal says future work is planned to focus on compiling and refining trace-element geochemistry, remodelling magnetic data and designing targeted drill holes to test the interpreted basement position.
While still early-stage, the results have delivered exactly what first-pass drilling is designed to do – reduce geological uncertainty and provide a clearer exploration direction.
In a region where subtle geochemical signals have preceded major discoveries, Red Metal’s Pardoo vector could prove to be an important step toward uncovering concealed Pilbara gold mineralisation
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