For a while, it seemed Perth-based Rumble Resources Ltd was pretty much focused on becoming a base and precious metals producer via its Earaheedy lead/zinc/silver project in Western Australia’s Murchison region.

But since then the junior has been somewhat distracted by the allure of gold and tungsten.

During the second half of November, the ASX-listed explorer announced that a major field program, involving 15,000 metres of RC and 5,000m of diamond drilling, had started at its brownfields Western Queen project targeting new high-grade plunging shoots.

According to Rumble, this work had the potential to grow the resources beneath the Western Queen South, Princess, Marquis, Duke and Western Queen Central deposits.

As it stands, Western Queen – located about 50 kilometres southeast of Cue – has gold resources of 4.42 million tonnes at 2.02 grams/t for 286,600 ounces, with mineralisation open along strike and at depth within the main 2.7km strike zone.

The targets are on granted mining licences located within a 100km radius of three gold processing facilities.

Historical mining at Western Queen recovered 880,000t at 7.6g/t for 215,000oz and now supports the potential for the discovery of further high-grade mineralisation similar to Spartan Resources Ltd’s Never Never gold project at Dalgaranga (also in the Murchison) some 28km away.

According to Rumble, the exploration program will be separated into two phases.

The first consists of 7,500m of RC and 1,250m of diamond drilling and is expected to be completed this calendar year.

Meanwhile, the second is scheduled to start early in the New Year and should be concluded during the first quarter of 2025.

Rumble recently conducted a successful $7.1 million raising to help fund this field program.

The priority targets are Princess, Western Queen South (WQS), Western Queen Central (WQC), Duke and Marquis, with all five yielding encouraging high-grade gold intercepts during previous drilling activities.

For instance, Princess ̶ which sits between the WQS and WQC open pit ̶ has returned 11m at 11g/t from 52m, 2m at 40.37g/t (4m), 3m at 19.9g/t (8m) and 2m at 8.26g/t (39m), while past results at WQC, located immediately below WQS, has revealed 4m at 49.73g/t (134m), 5m at 38.76g/t (193m), 17m at 5.7g/t (221m) and, in a potential new parallel lode, 5m at 5.02g/t (216m).

At WQS, situated beneath the WQC open pit and its underground workings, assays of 6.4m at 36.09g/t (305.7m), 6m at 34.24g/t (354m), 5m at 22 g/t (280m), 11.8m at 16.08 g/t (340.4m) have provided much encouragement, as has Duke (located beneath its namesake deposit and immediately north of WQC), where results of 8m at 26.27g/t (14m), 6m at 25.87g/t (48m), 7m at 60.6g/t (70m) and 6m at 37.34g/t (50m) have been delivered by the rig.

Finally Marquis, found underneath its namesake prospect 500m south of WQS, hosts intercepts including 6m at 4.30g/t (108m) and 4m at 5.67g/t (70m).

Conveniently, Western Queen is located within a 100km radius of three gold processing plants.

They are Dalgaranga, which sits 48km by road from the Rumble project, has a capacity of 2.5Mt per annum (and is currently on care and maintenance), Checkers at Mt Magnet (1.9Mtpa) and Tuckabianna near Cue (1.2Mtpa).

Rumble believes the two operating plants could provide a near-term toll-treating option for Western Queen ore.

When it comes to the critical mineral tungsten, during the September quarter the junior announced what it believed was a significant discovery in the main project area.

It boasted a “spectacular” intersection that included 4.05m at 4.58 per cent tungsten trioxide and 0.72g/t gold (from 174.85m).

Within this was 2.05m at 8.71 per cent tungsten trioxide and 1.38g/t gold (176.85m) as well as 0.65m at 18.35 per cent tungsten trioxide and 2.97g/t gold (176.85m).

According to Rumble, the mineralisation contains large aggregates of scheelite grains (up to 5 millimetres) occurring parallel to the main foliation trend.

In effect, it is essentially multiple scheelite-pyroxene (tremolite) plus/minus magnetite with plus/minus gold exoskarn zones associated with the Western Queen orogenic shear zone (host of the gold mineralisation) within dominant Archaean mafic amphibolite lithologies.

All previous drill holes completed by the junior as part of the 2021 gold resource drilling have subsequently been analysed for tungsten by pXRF. A review of this analytical data has shown some 87 RC and diamond drill holes have reported over 500 parts per million tungsten.

Of course, the junior has not turned its back on Earaheedy, located some 199km northeast of Wiluna, which already enjoys an inferred mineral resource of 2.2Mt zinc, 0.7Mt lead and 12.6Moz silver.

In its September quarterly Rumble said metallurgical test work on mineralised samples from the Chinook deposit was continuing, with material obtained from a drilling program, including 10 diamond holes, providing 2,300 kilograms of representative metallurgical core sample.

Further metallurgical test work of this material will include pilot beneficiation trials to assess the potential to upgrade the significant volumes of lower-grade zinc-lead mineralisation highlighted within the pit-constrained mineral resource, early comminution test work as well as further detailed mineralogy and flotation optimisation testing for future planned scoping studies.

“The Chinook metallurgical program required some additional flowsheet optimisation studies and is now nearing completion, with the program’s report due to be finalised in November and the results reported during December,” Rumble said.

The junior now plans to complete the current test work program on the Chinook material and release the findings from these documents.

Once this is completed, internal scoping due diligence is to be launched to consider possible future development scenarios and options.