Dart Mining chairman James Chirnside said: “The importance of acquiring a significant gold resource with considerable scope for growth cannot be underestimated. The acquisition will be Dart Mining’s first significant project outside Victoria and reflects our strategy to expand into advanced intrusion-related and epithermal gold projects in Queensland, whilst continuing to progress our prospective gold and porphyry projects in Victoria.”

Chirnside says the company will be able to add value to the project by using its own drill rigs and believes Queensland’s favourable prospectivity for million-ounce-plus gold deposits will provide an important strategic balance with its Victorian orogenic gold and porphyry projects. He is also adamant Triumph has room for significant growth through further drilling campaigns.

Dart intends to finalise its purchase in late October and will then update the resource estimate after collating the recent drill data, before kicking off a 10,000m drilling program. Tantalisingly, 85 per cent of the JORC estimate is within 100m of the surface and more than half of the 1.8km strike remains undrilled, giving the company plenty of opportunity to define a bigger intrusion-related gold system.

Initial plans are in place to use 7000m of drilling to step out to some obvious targets, especially the ones in magnetic lows that could quickly add to the southern corridor deposit resource.

In a wider area that has historically hosted 17 multi-million-ounce deposits, one of the more interesting observations is that almost all of them have been discovered at depth. Management has cited extensive research by renowned geologist, Dr Greg Morrison, as evidence of that and has decided to apply 3000m of diamond drilling under the existing deposit to test the theory and see what riches may lie beneath.

Dart is also continuing its work exploring and developing historical goldfields in north-east Victoria. With tenements covering almost 7000sq km, primarily in the Lachlan Fold Belt, and hosting a variety of metals including gold, copper, silver, molybdenum and lithium, the company has elected to focus more recently on its Rushworth gold project.

Systematic phase-one drilling at the site earlier in the year gave management a better understanding of the structural controls of the high-grade shoots that had been previously mined by prospectors – especially at a prospect known as Growlers Hill, where a 100m shaft had been built. Initial follow up phase-two drilling completed last month threw up 1.2m at 4.5 grams per tonne gold including 0.4m going 8.4g/t and 0.3m reading 6.6g/t gold. A further four holes are to be completed and results are due in the next month.

With a rapidly appreciating gold price – currently at an all-time high of US$2512 per ounce (AU$3721) – the timing of Dart’s deal appears to be spot on. And with a relatively small amount of additional work, the company could be on the cusp of a significantly-improved resource base.

Surrounded by compelling gold history on all sides of Triumph, Dart is set to burst through the old saloon bar door to get cracking on a mission aimed at mirroring its new acquisition’s name.

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