Terrain Minerals will launch its biggest-ever drilling campaign at the company’s 100 per cent-owned gold-silver-tungsten Smokebush project in WA’s Mid West, with an 86-hole, 10,905-metre reverse circulation (RC) program.
The drill rig is scheduled to arrive on-site this week at the project, 350 kilometres north of Perth, to begin a dual-focus program to upgrade and expand the company’s existing Lightning gold resource and test a suite of new, high-priority exploration targets.
The bulk of Terrain’s new program, some 54 holes for 5735m - 63 per cent of the total proposed metreage - is dedicated to resource definition drilling at its Lightning deposit. The work is designed to upgrade parts of the maiden 677,000-tonne inferred mineral resource, grading 2.5 grams per tonne (g/t) for 54,000 ounces of gold, to the higher-confidence indicated category.
Part of that work aims to expand the high-grade, open-pittable component of the resource, which currently sits at 157,000 tonnes grading a solid 3.5g/t gold for 17,500 ounces of the precious metal. Management says an upgrade to indicated status would enable the company to undertake initial mining studies, in line with its strategy of moving towards a potential small-scale toll-milling operation.
The other leg of the campaign will see 32 exploration drill holes punched in for 5170m to test an extensive grab-bag of compelling new targets. They include seven new priority induced-polarisation (IP) chargeability anomalies and several soil geochemical anomalies, some associated with IP anomalism, which management believes could represent potential repetitions of the Lightning mineralised system.
The company’s current exploration plan is based on the view that Lightning is not an isolated mineralised structure, but one member of a family of sub-parallel, shear-hosted gold systems within the Archean-age Yalgoo-Singleton greenstone belt.
Of the 32 exploration drill holes planned, 16 holes will test IP chargeability anomalies, while another 14 holes will probe interpreted strike extensions at the Lightning North and Target 13 prospects.
The company’s biggest drilling push comes as WA’s gold exploration sector operates at an unusually high intensity. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the state’s gold exploration spending reached a record A$461.1 million in the June 2026 quarter. With the national gold exploration expenditure totalling $565.6 million, WA accounts for more than 81 per cent of Australia’s commitment to the ongoing frenetic hunt for gold.
At the same time, spot gold appears to be consolidating near the A$6000 an ounce mark, supporting renewed investment in new projects that could be close to production.
Adding another string to its bow, Terrain plans to drill 12 holes into newly identified tungsten mineralisation at Smokebush. Follow-up work on the project’s tungsten potential is bathed in the warm glow of a favourable critical-minerals backdrop. S&P Global’s August Tungsten Market Report forecasts tungsten demand to grow by an estimated 10 per cent between 2026 and 2030. It figures demand will rise from around 162,000 tonnes of tungsten trioxide in 2025 to 180,000 tonnes by 2030, while projected ex-China mine supply is expected to remain well below anticipated demand.
This drilling program is designed to support an upgrade of parts of the Lightning Mineral Resource from the Inferred to Indicated category, which would enable initial mining studies to be undertaken.
The Smokebush project sits in a richly endowed patch of WA dirt, 50km south of 29Metals’ massive 63-million-tonne Golden Grove copper-gold-zinc mine and just 15km from Vault Minerals’ Rothsay gold mine.
With its 86-hole campaign about to get underway, Terrain is looking to significantly build its existing gold inventory to test its theory that it could be sitting on a much bigger, multi-deposit gold camp at Smokebush. If the drill bit delivers on both Terrain’s resource expansion and exploration fronts, the company could be in for a period of strong newsflow.
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