Big Hits: Big Hits: Far Northern strikes NT bonanza, AusQuest and Terra Metals

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Big Hits looks at notable drill hits reported to the ASX this week, led by bonanza NT gold from Far Northern Resources, huge copper runs from AusQuest Ltd in Peru and Terra Metals in WA.

Junior explorers have put on a clinic in how to deliver both sheer grade and massive vertical scale this week, proving that standout drill results can come from everything from a happy geotechnical outcome to deep, multi-horizon sulphide systems. From shallow bonanza gold grades in the Top End and towering porphyry copper columns in southern Peru, through to stacked platinum group metal reefs in WA’s remote West Musgrave, their drill bits have been working overtime across the globe. So let’s dive in.

Project: Bridge Creek gold project, Northern TerritoryHit: 4m at 110.06g/t gold from 16m downhole

Drilling a hole purely for metallurgical and geotechnical testing, only to stumble onto a blistering, shallow bonanza gold zone, is the kind of serendipity every junior explorer dreams about. Far Northern Resources has pulled off that exact coup with one of six diamond drill holes put into its Bridge Creek project, 125 kilometres south-southeast of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Targeting the northwestern margin of its Bridge Creek Central deposit, where previous drilling had been sparse, the company’s headline hole bored into a high-grade shoot just 16 metres below surface. The intercept returned a remarkable 4-metre length of core grading 110.06 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, underpinned by an eye-watering single-metre chunk assaying 425.2g/t gold from 16m. That’s “thirteen-and-a-half-ounce dirt” in the old prospectors’ language.

Immediately above that bonanza zone, the same hole tagged 2m at 14.14g/t gold from 11m, before hitting further mineralised runs of 2m at 1.14g/t gold from 30m and 3m at 3.05g/t gold from 36m.

Clocking in at a 440 gram-metre comparative index, the company says that primary intercept is the best one drilled at Bridge Creek to date. And while ground conditions forced the hole to be abandoned at 68.9m, it still gave a last hurrah with 0.9m at 0.83g/t gold from 68m.

While the northwestern margin delivered the high-grade fireworks, a second diamond hole…

Not…

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