PLC Resources is about to put the drill bit into the company’s Rochefort gold prospect in Western Australia’s prolific Murchison region for the first time, with a maiden reverse circulation (RC) program set to test its prime Abbott’s North real estate.
The company, formerly Premier1 Lithium, says earthworks are complete, ahead of a 1000-metre, five-hole program, designed as an initial test of a bullseye gold target that has never seen a drill hole.
Rochefort sits 35km north of Meekatharra within the Abbott’s greenstone belt and is defined by a large and coherent 400m by 350m gold-in-soil anomaly with peak values up to 42.9 parts per billion gold.
Adding some weight to the geochemical smoke, rock chip sampling from quartz-hematite veins across the prospect previously returned serious grades up to a solid 11.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.
PLC says its mineralisation is hosted within highly fractionated quartz dolerites, a well-known fertile setting seen across major Yilgarn gold camps.
Ground gravity and airborne magnetic data, which originally pinpointed the target, have highlighted a structurally complex corridor where north–south trends intersect a broader northwest contact, a classic structural sweet spot for fluid flow and gold deposition.
In the exploration game, location is everything and PLC’s ground looks to be in the right spot at the right time. Rochefort lies just 20km north of neighbouring New Murchison Gold’s recently discovered and now producing Crown Prince deposit, which hosts a resource of 2.2 million tonnes at an impressive 3.9g/t gold for 279,000 ounces.
Both the Crown Prince and Abbott’s North projects are housed within the same greenstone belt, a structure that’s also home to the historic Abbotts mining centre, which, between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, churned out 41,000 ounces of gold at a stunning head grade of 31g/t.
Despite the rich history, the area has seen very little by way of modern exploration, leaving plenty of blue sky for a plucky junior like PLC. Earlier this year, New Murchison continued its discovery success at the Lydia prospect, returning multiple promising high-grade intercepts, including 3m at a bonanza 32.9g/t gold.
PLC says the structural and geological similarities between Lydia and its own Rochefort prospect are compelling, with both featuring gold in altered dolerite units controlled by north-trending shear zones.
We’re drilling an untested gold target in a gold producing belt. Rochefort has all the geological hallmarks – high-grade rock chips, a strong soil anomaly, a defined structural setting – but no historical workings, which is rare in the Murchison.
Away from PLC’s Murchison ground, the company is also exploring at its flagship Yalgoo gold project, 300 kilometres to the southwest at the tier-1 Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt.
Yalgoo covers 266 square kilometres of gold and base metals tenure, just 50km along strike from 29 Metals’ 1.5-million-ounce gold equivalent Golden Grove operations and wedged between major gold producers Ramelius Resources and Capricorn Metals.
PLC recently revealed multi-element analysis, hinting at hidden potential for a volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) corridor across its Carlisle and Olive Queen prospects, a serious pathfinder signal just a stone’s throw away from the 50-year VMS monster at Golden Grove.
Whilst Yalgoo covers a bigger, more advanced footprint hosting multiple prospects and a known gold resource, Abbotts North adds the upside kicker, giving PLC exposure to a largely underexplored belt where new deposits are still emerging alongside the company’s broader system growth strategy.
The company says its gold strategy is to target technically robust systems, apply disciplined exploration and build a pipeline of prospects that can throw up some potentially high-grade discoveries akin to those of its major neighbours.
Given the cocktail of a large soil anomaly, high-grade rock chips, the right geology and a producing mine just down the road, PLC is betting on the latter.
With the drill bit soon spinning, the company won’t have to wait long to find out whether its punt on this patch of high-grade Murchison dirt can deliver the goods.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au
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