Three ASX-listed junior miners disclosed major drill results this week that materially expand known mineralisation across Western Australia, Idaho and northern Quebec.
New Murchison Gold reported a reverse circulation hole at its Crown Prince area within the Garden Gully project in Western Australia that returned 14m at 231.67g/t gold from 80m downhole. The intercept contains a four-metre core averaging 805.2g/t gold from 80m and a single-metre sample that averaged 2860g/t after a repeat assay.
Company geologists said the entire 14-metre interval showed no internal dilution and visible gold was present in the RC chips. The hit lies outside the current Crown Prince resource interpretation, sits close to the company’s proposed mine design and is about 43m vertically above the planned underground portal elevation.
New Murchison is planning a diamond twin hole to define the structural orientation and plunge of the new high-grade shoot as it advances studies toward an underground development concept.
Elk Range Mining’s maiden diamond hole at the Friday gold project in Idaho extended known mineralisation well beyond historical drilling, returning 290.3m at 2.8g/t gold from 18.7m downhole. The hole reached a total depth of 336.80m using HQ3 triple-tube core and was collared about 8m from a 2014 hole that was abandoned at 137.16m.
The new hole followed the same shear zone and continued roughly 200m past where the old hole stopped, producing a core interval of 89.6m at 5.5g/t gold from 76.6m and a higher-grade segment of 11.3m at 21.4g/t from 137.2m. Visible native gold was reported at five levels in the core, including a 1.5cm crystalline veinlet that assayed 120g/t over 0.39m.
Elk Range is drilling on patented ground that already contains underground mine infrastructure, and the firm says the oriented structural core dataset from the program will inform further holes as it works toward a maiden JORC resource estimate.
WhiteRock Lithium confirmed extensive, shallow spodumene-bearing pegmatites at its Banana lithium project in northern Quebec, led by an intercept of 84m at 1.84% lithium oxide from 8m at the Spodumene Mountain prospect. Early assays from 17 holes outlined multiple stacked, thick pegmatite corridors.
Other notable WhiteRock intercepts included 38.6m at 2.29% lithium oxide from 156.5m, and a nearby hole with 51.0m at 2.24%, 29.9m at 2.14% and 14.5m at 1.97%. The company says the pegmatite cluster’s strike has been extended from about 650m to roughly 1.4km and remains open in all directions.
Preliminary metallurgical testwork showed coarse spodumene responds well to heavy-liquid separation, producing a concentrate above 6% lithium oxide at recoveries up to 87%. WhiteRock’s drilling has paused for winter, with core processing and interpretation under way as the company targets a maiden resource estimate in the first half of 2027.
Taken together, the results highlight both high-grade, narrow shoot potential at Crown Prince and broad, continuous mineralised envelopes at Friday and Spodumene Mountain. Each company has outlined immediate follow-up work: New Murchison will twin the RC hole with diamond core, Elk Range is continuing oriented structural drilling, and WhiteRock is progressing metallurgical and modelling work ahead of a JORC submission.
The three announcements underline active exploration across multiple jurisdictions and give the respective projects clearer timelines for resource definition and early development planning. The results will be central to upcoming technical studies and investor assessments of the ASX juniors involved.
