Novo Resources has unveiled highly promising new exploration outcomes from its Wyloo gold-silver-antimony project in Western Australia's southern Pilbara region. The findings confirm multiple high-priority drill targets, setting the stage for the company's inaugural reverse circulation drilling campaign.
Wyloo SE Prospect Upgraded with Strong Anomalies
Recent efforts have significantly enhanced the Wyloo SE prospect, where a polymetallic vein system containing silver, antimony, arsenic, zinc, and lead has been verified. A soil sampling grid comprising 162 samples, spaced at 40 metres by 20 metres, delineated a robust multi-element anomaly extending over approximately 150 metres of strike. This anomaly runs parallel to the rock layers and intersects the main veins.
Peak soil responses recorded impressive values, including 57.2 parts per million silver, 142 ppm antimony, 1440 ppm arsenic, 2180 ppm zinc, and 1530 ppm lead. The anomaly remains open and trends under cover to the southwest and northeast, suggesting greater potential beneath shallow soils, water-borne sheetwash, and alluvium.
Novo Resources executive co-chairman and acting chief executive officer Mike Spreadborough stated: The results from Wyloo SE continue to impress, with recent soil sampling defining a strong, open-ended multielement anomaly over a known polymetallic vein system. These results enhance our confidence in the scale and prospectivity of the target, and we are very excited about conducting the maiden drill program into this compelling target.
Wyloo SW Prospect Reveals Extensive Target Zone
Follow-up work at the nearby Wyloo SW prospect, where an earlier high-grade antimony stream sediment anomaly was identified, has defined an extensive target zone measuring 2.5 kilometres long by 800 metres wide. This discovery emerged from an infill stream sediment program involving 54 samples aimed at tracing the source of the original anomaly.
Peak stream sediment sample results reached 19.9 ppm antimony and 57 ppm arsenic, accompanied by associated copper, lead, and zinc. Limited outcrop in the area exhibited evidence of strong shearing, quartz veining, and carbonate alteration. Selective rock-chip sampling from 53 samples yielded elevated but lower-grade values, including up to 570 ppm arsenic, 526 ppm copper, 431 ppm zinc, and 26 ppm antimony.
Despite the seemingly modest tenor of these results, Novo believes that elemental associations indicate an active mineralisation system. However, additional work is required to pinpoint the source of the anomalism under the thin surface cover.
Drilling Program and Geological Context
A heritage survey across the Wyloo SE area is scheduled for early next month, which should pave the way for the company's maiden 1500-metre reverse circulation drill program before the end of June. Drilling is planned to test the main east-northeast trending, high-grade polymetallic vein array at Wyloo SE, which is up to 18 metres wide at surface and exhibits intense sulphidic zones.
It will also evaluate the adjacent Tasha Fault zone and the west-northwest trending stratabound anomalies near sulphide-bearing intrusives, including a quartz-eye porphyry mapped nearby. Novo's Wyloo southeast and southwest prospects are situated in the core of the Wyloo anticline and on the southeast flank of the Wyloo Dome, a geologically recognised basement high in the regional-scale Ashburton Basin.
The Ashburton Basin is a major Proterozoic sedimentary basin in WA's northwest, spanning over 400 kilometres by 100 kilometres along the northern Capricorn Orogen. This extends from WA's northwest coastal highway, near Cane River, southeast to the Paraburdoo area. The Paulsons gold deposit, with historic production exceeding 900,000 ounces of gold, lies about 40 kilometres west-northwest of the Novo ground within the same dome structure.
Paulsens, currently owned and operated by Black Cat Syndicate, boasts an impressive resource of 4.3 million tonnes at 4 grams per tonne gold for 548,000 ounces of gold, with further exploration potential.
Historical Exploration and Future Prospects
Novo initially identified two regional antimony anomalies in the tenement area during a 2023 stream sampling program. Follow-up reconnaissance at Wyloo SE delivered notable rock chip results, with seven samples returning up to 387 grams per tonne silver, 0.38 per cent antimony, 5.0 per cent lead, 1.6 per cent zinc, 2.4 per cent copper, and 0.52 grams per tonne gold.
Additional mapping and sampling of quartz-sulphide veins at Wyloo SE last year further bolstered the prospect's credentials. More rock chip sample results refined the target, producing peak results of 482 grams per tonne silver, 1.29 per cent antimony, 9.7 per cent lead, 16 per cent zinc, 2.4 per cent copper, and 0.93 grams per tonne gold.
Geological mapping at Wyloo SE has revealed a highly prospective structural setting, with an important vein array paralleling the significant Tasha Fault and dipping moderately southeast on the margins of a rhyolite dome. The surrounding geology also includes several sub-volcanic intrusions, notably a quartz-eye porphyry displaying disseminated malachite formed from the near-surface breakdown of copper sulphides.
Another positive indicator for Wyloo is the presence of jasperoidal replacement zones. These silica-rich, sulphide-bearing rocks form when hot, silica-charged fluids push through fractures and replace carbonate rocks such as limestone with quartz. Such hydrothermal overprints are often associated with ore deposits and can guide exploration to nearby mineralisation.
The new results have clearly brought the target into sharper focus and generated excitement ahead of Novo's first real drill test of the Wyloo SE polymetallic system. With multiple open anomalies and drilling just months away, the Wyloo ground could deliver a fresh discovery story for Novo in a proven Pilbara neighbourhood.
