Maritana drills into Wilsons gold target
Maritana Minerals has commenced drilling at its Wilsons gold prospect in Western Australia, marking the first dedicated program to test the project’s gold potential beneath a large surface anomaly located just 400m from the Black Swan processing hub.
The company has launched a 4000m aircore (AC) drilling program designed to investigate the geology and potential for gold mineralisation beneath a coherent gold-in-soil anomaly first identified in 2024. The target covers an area measuring approximately 2.5km by 1.5km and remains open along strike.
Wilsons sits on a granted mining lease immediately north of the Black Swan processing hub in the Eastern Goldfields, positioning any future discovery close to existing infrastructure.
Maritana said historical exploration in the district was overwhelmingly focused on nickel sulphide mineralisation, leaving much of the area’s gold potential largely untested, with managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) Grant Haywood saying the proximity of the prospect to processing infrastructure strengthened its appeal.
“The Wilsons Gold Prospect is a compelling, near-infrastructure discovery opportunity,” he said.
“Sitting within view of the BSPH and on a granted Mining Lease, any discovery has high potential to be a valuable future source of feed for Black Swan.
“This first-pass aircore program is designed to systematically test what lies beneath a very strong surface anomaly and to build the geological understanding for follow-up drilling, including the northern extension of the Prospect on the underexplored ground we recently acquired from Nano Metals.”
According to Maritana, the Wilsons anomaly coincides with several encouraging indicators, including recovered gold nuggets, gossanous quartz-vein rock chip samples grading up to 1.25 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, and historical gold intersections from nickel-focused drilling, including 0.4m at 6.41g/t gold.
The current aircore campaign will provide the first dedicated shallow drilling across the prospect, testing bedrock geology and regolith beneath the anomaly while helping define the structural and lithological controls on mineralisation.
The company said the program will also deliver geochemical information below surface cover to guide future exploration.
Once drilling is complete, Maritana said it will submit samples for assay before interpreting the results alongside geological logging to identify follow-up drill targets.
The company also plans to test the northern extension of the Wilsons prospect on tenements recently acquired from Nano Metals, as well as other anomalies identified through its 2024 soil sampling campaign; assay results are expected to be reported to the market in late September or early October.