Dart adds advanced antimony-gold project to Queensland quiver

Dart Mining has added another arrow to its Queensland quiver, securing a future majority stake in the high-grade Coonambula antimony-gold project, 130 kilometres from its flagship Triumph gold project in Central Queensland.

The binding farm-in agreement with now-gold developer Great Divide Mining positions Dart to exploit the advanced project and surging antimony prices, which have increased thanks to China’s recent export ban.

The Coonambula project sprawls across 282 square kilometres of granted tenements, with an additional 227 square kilometres under application. It is in the mineral-rich New England Orogen in New South Wales - a geological hotspot home to antimony market darlings such as Larvotto Resources’ Hillgrove mine.

Dart’s latest move will target the historic Banshee mine, where past drilling and rock chips unearthed jaw-dropping grades including a 3-metre hit running at 9.18 per cent antimony from 158m, a thicker 6m section grading 5.12 per cent antimony and 1.55 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 77m, and rock chips samples peaking at a massive 44.9 per cent antimony and 9.93g/t gold.

Management sees a golden opportunity at the prospect, which has seen limited modern exploration since 2014 and limited drilling required to define a JORC-compliant resource at speed.

Under the deal, Dart will pay $250,000 upfront for a 15 per cent interest in the Coonambula project and then run a 4000m drilling campaign over two years to earn up to a 51 per cent stake.

The company’s diamond rigs are already humming away on a 7000m diamond drilling program at Dart’s Triumph project and will then roll straight into Coonambula to start with 2000m of infill drilling at Banshee later this year.

Initial drilling will aim to confirm Coonambula’s historic high-grade intercepts and fast-track a maiden resource. Drill holes will be spaced 20-30m apart across a 300m antimony-rich core zone.

Year two of the farm-in will see a further 2000m of drilling to chase extensions along a 5km east-west strike and test gold-heavy targets such as Perseverance, where historical mining coughed up 20,000 tonnes at 20g/t gold.

Coonambula positions Dart to the forefront of antimony exploration in one of Australia’s best antimony addresses, the New England Orogen that also hosts Larvotto’s Hillgrove gold- antimony mine and Trigg’s Wild Cattle Creek antimony deposit. We will be drilling with the intent to declare a JORC-compliant antimony-gold resource at the historic Banshee mine at the earliest opportunity.

The project’s allure isn’t just in its grades - it’s also in its geology. Hosted in intrusive granites, Coonambula mirrors the intrusion-related gold systems that define multi-million-ounce deposits such as Cracow, 70km northwest, and Ravenswood further afield.

The Banshee mine is one of Central Queensland’s largest historical antimony mines and stands out for producing direct shipping ore going back to 1876. Surface trenching by Brisbane-based miner Great Divide Mining last year delivered 4m at 3.09g/t gold and 1.14 per cent antimony, while the nearby Lady Mary mine, 1km east, returned rock chips up to 49.6 per cent antimony.

The 5km strike zone linking these prospects remains largely untested.

Strategically, Coonambula slots neatly into Dart’s Queensland playbook.

It is 390km north-northwest of Brisbane and a stone’s throw from Triumph, where the company recently boosted its mineral resource by 27 per cent to 150,000 ounces of gold from a solid 2.16 million tonnes of mineralisation grading 2.17g/t gold.

The company is now leveraging its in-house rigs, crews and infrastructure to keep costs lean.

Great Divide’s CEO Justin Haines sees it as a win-win.

Haines says the farm-in agreement with Dart secures a partner to advance Coonambula’s prospects that will allow his company to “further focus on project development, operation, and near-term cash-flow”, including its freshly announced refurbishment of the Challenger gold mine in South Australia.

With gold prices hitting new highs and antimony’s record prices also holding strong, Dart is doubling down on the New England Orogen’s potential.

Alongside Triumph’s ongoing drilling and a recent 192-square-kilometre tenement application at the Raglan goldfields in the region, Coonambula adds a dual-commodity twist to the company’s Queensland growth story. The next 12 months promise a flurry of cheap drilling activity – and plenty of news for punters wishing to stick with the surging yellow and silvery-white metals.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au