Western Australia’s goldfields are not typically the first place that come to mind when thinking about underexplored regions, but Hamelin Gold (ASX:HMG) Managing Director Peter Bewick thinks that’s exactly what it is.
“It’s weird to think of parts of Australia as being under-explored,” Bewick says.
“Everyone thinks ‘we’ve been exploring for minerals here for 100 plus years’, but there are sections and areas within Australia that are still not just under-explored, but completely unexplored.”
Exploring these regions is the core of the strategy at Hamelin, and it’s seen success with drilling programs across its West Tanami Project in 2025. Both Jazz and South Fremlins prospects delivered encouraging drill results, demonstrating bedrock gold mineralisation and the potential for large scale mineralisation.
Many areas aren’t overlooked due to a lack of prospectivity, Bewick says, but because surface cover historically limited the tools available to explore them properly.
That’s what Hamelin is set up to do, explains Bewick — go into areas where there’s very little data and try to work out what’s going on beneath the cover.
Jazz stands out as a particularly interesting prospect as it’s a granite-hosted gold system previously unrecognised in the West Tanami.
This type of system is often associated with very high-volume, lower grade deposits that can be amenable to open-pit mining. Bewick says this discovery fundamentally changed their understanding of what could exist under the sands in the West Tanami.
“Jazz really changed our thinking about the West Tanami,” Bewick says.
“It showed us the mineral system there could be much larger and more varied than what we’d initially been targeting.”
South Fremlins represents the type of mineralisation more typically seen in the West Tanami, with narrow, potentially very high-grade shoots. These shoots often have a small surface footprint but can extend a long way underground.
The next phase is really about understanding geometry and continuity — working out where the shoots are and how they behave at depth.
From Tanami to Eastern Goldfields
With the West Tanami projects moving into their next phase, Hamelin is busy securing tenements and approvals in some of the most prolific gold producing regions in Western Australia.
Hamelin recently expanded its tenement holdings at Venus, which now consists of 300km2, making it one of the largest holders in the Cue region.
The Venus project intersects two significant corridors in the region: Tuckabianna and Comet. Westgold’s Comet mine sits right on the border of the Venus project.
“I stood on it a few weeks ago and you could literally throw a stone into the open pit that was mined on the other side of the tenement boundary,” Bewick says.
“There is a geological intrusion that cuts off that main deposit, but the same geology steps down to the south and has been underexplored because it’s under a bit of sand.”
That’s where the UltraFine+ process comes in. Developed by the CSIRO in partnership with the Minerals Research Institute of WA and the Geological Survey of WA, UltraFine+ allows explorers to ‘look through’ the sand or other surface cover with geochemical analysis.
While surface geochemical analysis is nothing new in gold mining, traditional methods have only been able to detect near-surface mineralisation in residual terrains. By analysing particles less than two microns in size, Hamelin can use this process in areas of shallow cover to achieve more accurate targeting, leading to more efficient use of drilling.
Bewick was among the pioneers in the use of this technology at Encounter Resources (ASX:ENR). Encounter recently won the AMEC Prospector Award for its high-grade niobium and rare earth discovery, Aileron.
Venus ‘could be a monster’
Calling the Cue region ‘underexplored’ might seem like an odd statement at first glance. But despite the existence of several large mines and resources, there are still areas that have barely been touched by a drill rig. And not due to a lack of prospectivity.
“You’ve got multi-million-ounce gold systems dotted all through the Cue region, but they tend to occur where the geology is sticking out of the ground. Exploration just stops at the lake edge,” Bewick says.
“To think that the prospectivity of the geology changes as you go under the lake just doesn’t make sense.”
While the UltraFine+ soil sampling process won’t work with a salt lake in the way, the fringe area of the lake is highly amenable to the technique, according to Bewick. Combined with conceptual modelling, he’s excited to find out what lies beneath the salt lake.
“The structural target we’ve generated under the lake is one of the best conceptual gold targets I think I’ve seen in the eastern goldfields.”
Though Hamelin was only granted its first tenement in the area in October, the company is wasting no time getting work underway. Geochemical sampling is already happening, with heritage surveys planned for the first quarter of next year, working towards drilling in the first half of 2026.
“If someone asked me what this target could potentially be, I think it could be the biggest in the district.”
There’s always risk with conceptual targets like this, but the truth will ultimately lie in the drill intercepts.
“If we’re right, it could be a monster”
And this is the essence of Hamelin’s strategy — they’re looking for big deposits that could lead to mine lives of 20, 30, or even 50 years. True greenfields exploration like this is undoubtedly a high-risk, high-reward game, but with fewer companies engaging in this type of exploration these days, Hamelin seems to have carved itself out an interesting niche.
A detour via Telfer
While large greenfields prospecting is the core of Hamelin’s strategy, drilling holes in the desert gets expensive very quickly, and capital markets aren’t always friendly.
Barring the rare circumstance where the timing aligns, this has traditionally left explorers with two options; tap the markets when times are good, whether the cash is needed or not, or tap the markets when the cash is needed, potentially leading to deep discounts and heavy dilution.
But there is a third option — generate the cash yourself.
Small toll milling operations have long been a path to cash generation in Canada and in private markets, though it’s not been seen often in Australian listed explorers until recently. With gold now comfortably fetching over $6,500 per ounce, deposits that wouldn’t have been worth the effort even two years ago now look interesting.
Hamelin’s Day Dawn project sits just 10km from Greatland Resources’ (ASX:GGP) Telfer Gold Mine.
The road ahead
While Bewick is careful to point out that Day Dawn “is not going to be a multi-million ounce gold system”, that’s not the intention, given the project’s place within Hamelin’s broader strategy.
“While we’re doing that at Day Dawn, that’s to fund the big picture story,” he says.
Day Dawn sits immediately adjacent to Greatland Resources’ Telfer operation, making it one of the closest non-Greatland-held tenements in the area, according to Bewick.
While there’s been prospecting in the area and nuggets found at surface, nobody has managed to find a “shoot” that contains an economical deposit of gold. Bewick’s thinking is that the tenement could host a deposit of 50,000 or 100,000 ounces, or 250,000, if he’s being optimistic.
A deposit like that could provide near-term cashflow through toll treatment or, given the free-milling nature of many of the deposits in the region, Hamelin may even be able to process the ore itself using a small gravity circuit.
“Day Dawn could be a 12-month exercise because it’s so shallow and so easy to access.”
Looking ahead, Bewick is keen to get ‘runs on the board’ in 2026. He points to three main goals for the year ahead:
- Move toward developing a resource at West Tanami
- Progress Day Dawn toward monetisation
- Deliver one or two “good holes” at Tanami or Venus
“This time next year, if I’m sitting on a 10 (metres) at 10 (grams per tonne Au) or a 20 at five type intersection, I think we’ll be pretty happy.”
*Note: The author, Patrick Poke, owns shares in Greatland Resources’ via its London listing (LON:GGP).
Write to Patrick Poke at Mining.com.au
Images: Hamelin Gold
