Mt Palmer gold hits boost Forrestania: design and extraction notes for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Strong gold intercepts at Forrestania Resources’ Mt Palmer project in Western Australia include multiple high‑grade zones, boosting the project’s exploration momentum and follow‑up drilling plans. The historic Mt Palmer mine area, which previously produced significant ounces from narrow high‑grade veins, is now returning modern RC and diamond drilling results that confirm mineralisation continuity along strike and at depth. For geotechs and mine planners, the combination of steeply dipping lodes and remnant underground workings points to selective underground extraction scenarios rather than bulk open‑pit designs.
Technical Brief
- Steep, narrow vein geometry implies tight drill spacing to constrain lode continuity and true widths.
- Presence of remnant underground voids will require detailed cavity mapping before any new decline design.
- Historic narrow-vein mining suggests future layouts based on closely spaced sublevels and short strike drives.
- Ground conditions around old workings likely demand systematic cable bolting and mesh for rehabilitation access.
- Any modern underground option will need careful crown pillar design above existing stopes to manage subsidence risk.
- Water inflows from old mine voids could complicate drilling and later dewatering, requiring staged hydrogeological assessment.
Our Take
Forrestania Resources has been on an acquisition push in Western Australia’s gold space, with recent moves at Hyden and Johnson Range signalling a strategy to build a multi-asset gold portfolio rather than rely on a single project like Mt Palmer.
The confirmed 103,500-ounce resource at Johnson Range, combined with ongoing exploration at Mt Palmer, suggests Forrestania is trying to assemble sufficient scale to interest mid-tier contractors and potential financiers in a hub-and-spoke development model in the Wheatbelt/Forrestania region.
Within our gold-tagged mining coverage, Forrestania Resources now appears repeatedly as a junior consolidator in Western Australia, which may give it leverage in future negotiations with vendors of nearby tenements or processing infrastructure.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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