Exploring the Golden Ridge in Tasmania

Flynn Gold Limited (ASX:FG1) Managing Director Neil Marston discusses the company's portfolio of projects, including its gold explortation in north-east Tasmania.

Tim McGowen: We're talking with Flynn Gold (ASX:FG1) today. It's got a market cap of around $7m. We're joined by the Managing Director, Neil Marston. Neil, thanks for your time. Welcome to Sydney.

Neil Marston: Nice to be with you, Tim.

Tim McGowen: Now, for those investors who don't know the Flynn Gold story, can you tell us where you're at?

Neil Marston: Sure. Look, the company listed just two years ago now. Our projects are predominantly in Tasmania and Western Australia. We're a gold and battery metals-focused company. Most of our exploration efforts to date have been in north-east Tasmania chasing gold, but we also have some tin and tungsten areas we're looking at. And certainly in Western Australia we've got quite a bit of parcels of ground up in the Pilbara and also in the Yilgarn. Early stage work on some of those areas, and still waiting for some applications to be granted. So, yeah, we've had a good two years since the company listed.

Tim McGowen: And in regards to your gold exploration program in northern Tasmania, that had some exciting high-grade results for the company. You had a big program of exploration in 2022. What have been the key highlights of that program?

Neil Marston: The key highlight for me has been the drilling we've undertaken at the Trafalgar Prospect, which is part of the Golden Ridge project. We reported an intersection of over 12m at over 16g per tonne just before Christmas, and that was a catalyst for us to go and raise $3.8m, which we're using those funds to continue exploration there. We've got a drill rig back at Trafalgar drilling at the moment. We've still got big news flow coming through as far as the drilling core, cutting core and getting samples through over the next few weeks. We've got over 700 samples in the lab at the moment.

So, that's certainly been the highlight. And really, yeah, just seeing the potential of north-east Tasmania has been quite incredible. I'm predominantly been in Western Australia doing exploration, but to see the opportunity in north-east Tasmania where there's been almost no drilling historically, and we're chasing geology which is very similar to the rich gold fields of Victoria.

Tim McGowen: I was going to ask you to kind of elaborate a little bit more on that. Investors don't associate Tasmania with kind of gold exploration. Can you give us some insights into what you're seeing down there?

Neil Marston: Exactly. Look, the north-east part of Tasmania is considered to be part of the western Lachlan origin. So, that's what flows up through into Victoria and beyond into New South Wales. So, very prospective rocks, same age, the gold mineralisation that's occurred there is pretty much of the same generation. You've got high-grade gold mines that have been worked in the past. Beaconsfield, obviously, is the biggest gold mine in Tasmania, which produced about 2 million ounces at about 15g per tonne of gold. So, that's a very high-grade deposit. And on our ground or just adjacent to our ground, the old Mathinna Gold Mine produced over a quarter million ounces at a grade of 26g per tonne in its day. So, that was the only mine sort of in north-east Tasmania which went as deep as, say, Beaconsfield. And, yeah, they demonstrated that there's certainly high-grade mineralisation at depth, which is what Victorian miners have demonstrated over the last few years.

Tim McGowen: And I was going to ask you, so what's on the agenda now in your Golden Ridge project and other projects for the remainder of 2023?

Neil Marston: Look, Golden Ridge, as I said, we're drilling at Trafalgar. We did some scout RC drilling on some of the other areas last year. So, we've got clearances to go and put some diamond holes into an area called the link zone, which basically links up between the Brilliant prospect and Trafalgar. It's about 2.5km between the two, so we've got some plans to drill some holes there.

We certainly want to step out at Trafalgar. We've got about 200m of strike length and open up and down dip. We want to test that. Increase the scale of the deposit. And the mineralization, it's quite complex, and so we want to get a good understanding of it. But the whole Golden Ridge area, it's about 8km of area we want to focus on.

Outside of that, we've got an option on some ground called Warrentinna. We'll be looking to exercise that potentially in the next month or so and get out there and do some drilling later on. And so they're just two of the areas where we'll be putting a lot of effort in over the next few months.

Tim McGowen: And outside of gold, what are the other sort of commodity opportunities that you have in Tasmania?

Neil Marston: North-east Tasmania is renowned for a history of tin mining. We've got some tin deposits on our ground up there, and I was up there last month having a look around with the team. Certainly some hard rock tin potential, which we like, and we're certainly going to continue to slowly advance that, evaluate that, take samples and do some mapping. And tungsten's associated with that, so that's quite an interesting area. And on the west coast of Tasmania, we've also got our Henty zinc project, which we've got plans to drill in that area, and we are just seeking the MRT approval so we can go and do that drilling program this year.

Tim McGowen: A little bit spoiled for choice there. And then on the other side of the country in WA, and you touched on battery minerals, you've got some lithium projects. What sort of exploration activities are you undertaking there with lithium?

Neil Marston: Yeah, look, we've got projects in the Pilbara. An area, Mt Dove, we did some soil sampling there last year, brought up a lithium anomaly, which we're going to go back and do some more conventional soil sampling over the next few months to verify that basically. And that was a very broad space program, 400m grid. So, we want to infill that and sort of do some geophysics as well around that target.

We've also got ground down around Forrestania and Koolyanobbing. The Forrestania ground mass, that hasn't been granted yet, but we're certainly doing some desktop studies on that, and that looks really exciting because we've got ground about 10km from Mt Holland, which is, you know, the large lithium mine which Wesfarmers (ASX:WES) and SQM are developing. So, yeah, look, it's a really exciting space to be in, exploring for lithium and gold and nickel in those sort of greenstone belts around Forrestania and Lake Johnston further to the east.

Tim McGowen: Neil Marston, thanks for your time.

Neil Marston: Thanks, Tim. Great to be with you.