Dreadnought Resources Ltd has commenced a large-scale air core drilling program comprising approximately 750 holes for roughly 50,000 metres at the 100% owned Illaara Gold Project in Western Australia’s Yilgarn region.

The expanded campaign follows a previous air core program that completed 493 holes for approximately 35,000 metres. The current work forms part of Dreadnought’s corporate strategy targeting large-scale gold discoveries across its consolidated landholding, which spans approximately 800 square kilometres and 70 kilometres of strike located roughly 190 kilometres north-west of Kalgoorlie.

The drilling program begins at the Black Oak prospect, where crews aim to define the strike extent of mineralised structures identified during first-pass work. Previous drilling at Black Oak returned notable intercepts including 18 metres at 0.8 grams per tonne gold from 36 metres to end-of-hole, which included 3 metres at 1.8 grams per tonne gold from 51 metres in hole ILAC0483, alongside 21 metres at 0.3 grams per tonne gold from surface in hole ILAC0139.

“Our first-pass drilling has already identified over 40km of prospective mineralised corridors while having tested only around 10% of the Illaara greenstone belt. Black Oak is one of those mineralised structures and, according to the results to date, has the potential to host a large-scale gold system. Wide-spaced drilling has defined a >7 km corridor of gold mineralisation, open to the north and growing, with shallow gold mineralisation from surface and a strong orogenic gold pathfinder association including Ag-As-Sb-Te-W, which is a signature we look for in an emerging orogenic gold system.”

— Dean Tuck, Managing Director

Following the initial phase at Black Oak, follow-up drilling will proceed to CRA Homestead alongside first-pass drilling in the southern and eastern parts of the project area.

The overall drilling campaign is expected to take three to four months to complete. Dreadnought anticipates receiving the first assay results from the infill air core program at Black Oak in October 2026.

Read the full announcement: Air Core Drilling Commenced at Black Oak, Illaara Gold