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Penny Taylor
Broken Hill Gold has put considerably more meat on the bones of the company’s restart ambitions in South Australia, lifting the indicated oxide gold resource at its Vertigo prospect by 160 per cent after a major infill and resource-expansion drilling push.
Vertigo is one of the historical open pits at the company’s 100 per cent-owned White Dam gold project, 80km west of Broken Hill in the Curnamona Province. The deposit now packs a total indicated and inferred resource of 2.30 million tonnes at 0.74 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for 54,795 ounces, a healthy 43 per cent jump on its 2020 estimate. Importantly, the higher-confidence indicated component has swelled to 1.43Mt at 0.53g/t for 24,300 ounces, with the mineralisation either outcropping or sitting shallow within an existing mining lease.
Broken Hill completed 279 reverse circulation (RC) holes totalling 13.5km during 2025–26, with 51 per cent of those drilling metres used to calculate the new estimate. Combined with historical data validation and improved geological interpretation, the work added ounces and helped convert inferred material to indicated.
Across White Dam, the global resource now stands at 5.2Mt at 0.7g/t for 118,496 gold ounces, including 43,500 ounces in the indicated category. The Vertigo update is the first of three oxide gold resource recalculations from the drilling campaign.
‘I am confident that White Dam will demonstrate the potential to deliver a significant Gold-Copper project as further drilling results are received.’
Broken Hill Gold managing director Matthew Boyes
Management says the new ounces could provide the feed for a restart of the Vertigo open pit, with the shallow, weathered material well suited to White Dam’s existing heap-leach operation, where cyanide solution is passed through crushed ore to extract the gold. Historical records show a recovery rate of 80.2 per cent from saprolite and partly weathered transitional ore, although a Vertigo-specific rate cannot be calculated because its material was originally co-stacked with ore from another White Dam deposit.
White Dam brings useful brownfields pedigree to the equation. It produced roughly 180,000oz from 7.5Mt at 0.94g/t between 2010 and 2018 and retains pits, heap-leach infrastructure and processing facilities, giving a viable restart a head start over a greenfields build.
Broken Hill Gold managing director Matthew Boyes said: “The real story developing here at White Dam is the sulphide gold potential this system contains. We know we have ~55koz of gold in mineral resource at Vertigo already, with the grade increasing as we go deeper.”
The story gets even more intriguing with depth. Below that weathered gold zone lies the potential for a fresh-rock gold-copper sulphide system carrying both gold and copper. Vertigo’s thick tabular mineralised zone dips at 15 degrees and remains open beyond the pit limits, with gold and copper grades increasing down-dip, similar to the company’s nearby Icebreaker deposit.
Icebreaker recently helped rewrite the geological script at White Dam after drilling revealed gold-copper sulphides hidden beneath a field historically geared to shallow oxide mining. The standout results included 28m at 2.4g/t gold and 0.7 per cent copper from 93m, including 16m at 3.5g/t gold and 0.9 per cent copper from 96m. In contrast, Vertigo’s fresh-rock resource remains entirely inferred, leaving drilling to establish its extent.
The rigs now get their chance to test the theory. Eight holes across 650m of strike are planned to probe potential extensions 200m down-dip, while a second multipurpose RC and diamond rig ramps up the broader campaign.
Shallow gold drilling will continue at nearby Rolling and Hannaford East before a rig returns to Icebreaker to finish its shallow resource drill-out and pursue gold-copper sulphides. Step-out and extension drilling will also test surrounding prospects for resource growth and mineralisation continuity.
Metallurgy is running alongside the drill bit. Carbon-in-leach testwork is assessing whether fresh material could deliver higher recoveries by grinding it before cyanide dissolves the gold and carbon captures it. Earlier cyanide work recovered nearly all the gold from material ground to 120 micrometres. Vertigo East and North samples are heading into column testing in October, with further representative work recommended for fresh material.
Induced polarisation and ground magnetic surveys are expected to finish by mid-October, refining sulphide targets around Icebreaker and Vertigo and at Mary Mine, a regional gold-copper target 12km west. Management’s priority sulphide targets remain Icebreaker, Vertigo and, in particular, Hannaford, where historical gold grades below the pit floor point to ground never systematically drilled.
Mining studies will deliver economic parameters, pit designs and scheduling for the oxide restart case, with a prefeasibility study planned after remaining shallow resources are updated.
White Dam has more than 50 prospects, many still only lightly tested at depth. More than 30,000m of reverse-circulation and diamond drilling is planned to test that potential over the next 18 months.
Backed by a recent $13M placement, the company now has two clocks running at White Dam: advancing shallow oxide ounces towards a potential restart while testing how big the sulphide story can become. Vertigo has just moved both hands forward.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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