North American major Newmont Mining's ongoing and strong success with the drill rigs at Callie is the obvious magnet for the region with 13 million ounces of gold endowment at one project more than enough to induce interest from companies large and small.
That's been compounded by factors such as the provision of pre-competitive data - such as a new airborne gravity survey completed on the WA side of the region by the Geological Survey of WA that was released in January - and the strong balance sheets being rung up by gold miners that allow for significant exploration budgets.
And then there's Australia's attractiveness from a sovereign risk perspective continuing to rise versus the rest of the world.
All of which has seen increased attention being brought to bear.
Greenfields explorer Encounter Resources picked up ground three days after the Geological Survey of WA gravity survey data was released, with Newmont following suit about 10 days later.
Encounter's ground is called the Phillipson Range Anomaly and is subject to alliance with ASX gold leader Newcrest Mining that sees the two parties with a 50% stake in projects of interest to the major.
Meanwhile, the old and chequered ABM Resources that's now called Prodigy Gold has been recently having early stage success on the Northern Territory side of the region, including notable broad spaced reconnaissance aircore results at Capstan.
"We believe Capstan is a large scale gold system and the results returned recently are starting to confirm this," Prodigy said earlier this month.
Gold miner St Barbara put A$4.4 million into Prodigy in March.
Other notable gold miners active on the ground are Independence Group and Northern Star, the latter which owns the previously mined Groundrush-Central Tanami operation.
Both companies have been pegging ground, and again, both have the strong balance sheets and growth ambitions to give their ground a sizeable and systematic shakes.
Fingers crossed for all and sundry!
TAM Price at posting:
3.8¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
