Hamelin turns up the heat in the Tanami with smart soil science and drill-ready gold targets across Australia’s most elusive undercover terrain

Western Australian gold explorer Hamelin Gold is taking a data-driven approach to cracking some of the state's most prospective but underexplored terrains, blending geoscience and tech in the hunt for multi-million-ounce deposits.

Speaking at the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up, managing director Peter Bewick described how the company is using innovative geochemistry and structural interpretation to unlock value in the Tanami Desert and across WA.

“We are out there looking for something that’s going to be here for a very long time,” said Bewick. “We’re not just chasing anomalies—we’re using new technologies to zero in on big systems.”

A golden footprint in the Tanami

The company’s flagship project in the West Tanami—spanning 1,900 square kilometres—is positioned over 100 strike kilometres of prospective geology, including the same structural corridor that hosts Newmont’s 20-million-ounce Callie deposit and its emerging 2.7Moz Oberon discovery.

“It’s absolutely fantastic to be in gold right now,” said Bewick. “This is Newmont’s lowest cost production centre globally—US$1,100 an ounce—and it’s still delivering major discoveries.”

Hamelin’s ground covers what Bewick described as “one of the most underexplored, yet most prolific, gold provinces in Australia,” with cover sequences that have traditionally hindered exploration.

Leveraging CSIRO’s Ultrafine® soil tech

To overcome the challenges of the Tanami’s sand-covered landscape, Hamelin has adopted CSIRO’s Ultrafine® soil geochemistry, a technique that significantly amplifies gold and pathfinder element signatures in areas where conventional sampling fails.

“In one area, the Ultrafine method gave us a six to eight hundred percent amplification in gold response,” Bewick explained. “It’s like turning on the lights in a room you didn’t know existed.”

This method not only identified a kilometre-long gold anomaly but also allowed the company to map basement geology beneath cover using multi-element data, pinpointing cross-cutting hydrothermal structures enriched in bismuth, arsenic, and tungsten.

One such zone—previously considered unprospective—returned a broad and coherent gold anomaly in drilling, sitting over a granite intrusion. “It’s not what you mine, but it’s the sort of anomaly that could be sitting above something much bigger,” Bewick added.

Drilling programs ramping up

Two high-priority targets in the Tanami—Jazz and Fremlins—are being tested in an RC program co-funded by the WA Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS), with 4,500m of drilling scheduled across May and June.

At the Jazz prospect, initial aircore work in late 2024 identified a new gold zone associated with bismuth anomalies and a large hydrothermal system, supported by favourable structural architecture. Drilling will now test the scale and grade potential of this system.

Fremlins South, meanwhile, is a 9km-long gold system identified through historic shallow RAB drilling and more recent aircore work. A 2,400m RC program is underway to probe deeper into fresh rock, following broad mineralisation intersected last year.

Yilgarn expansion adds depth

Beyond the Tanami, Hamelin is also building out a WA-wide pipeline, including the Ularring, Anderson, and Venus projects in the Yilgarn Craton.

Ularring—between Riverina and Davyhurst—recently saw a 2,216m RC program completed in March 2025, with assays expected imminently. Early results from Ultrafine® soil sampling defined a 500m-long gold anomaly, supported by a rock chip sample grading 7.9g/t Au.

Meanwhile, at Anderson, multi-phase soil sampling and historical drill reinterpretation have outlined a 3km-long bedrock gold corridor. “This is an ideal trial site for applying Ultrafine® tech in the Wheatbelt,” said Bewick. Stratigraphic diamond drilling is planned for late 2025.

Looking ahead

Hamelin's 2025 exploration timeline is stacked. In addition to the West Tanami RC program, an airborne EM survey—also co-funded by the WA Government—is scheduled for July, with 5,000m of aircore drilling to follow in Q3.

With $5.7 million in cash and a tight shareholder base led by Gold Fields (18%) and Volt Resources (12%), Hamelin is well positioned to deliver discovery-driven value. “We’re not here to do incremental exploration,” Bewick concluded. “We’re chasing the big prize.”