Mining Jobs - MES

7 August 2026 | Queensland - Austral Resources has secured a $15 million investment from the QIC Queensland Critical Minerals Fund to support expansion planning at its Rocklands copper processing facility in North West Queensland.

The funding has been structured as a non-dilutive royalty financing arrangement and will initially support a Stage 2 expansion scoping study, together with investigations into alternative power options for the operation.

The study will assess increasing Rocklands’ processing capacity from its existing 3.0 million tonnes per annum to between 4.5Mtpa and 6.0Mtpa.

Austral said the upper end of the proposed expansion range may be provisioned to provide additional capacity and future operating flexibility.

7 August 2026 | Western Australia - Maritana Minerals has commenced a 4,000m aircore drilling program at the Wilsons Gold Prospect, located approximately 400m north of the Black Swan Processing Hub in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields.

The program is the first major drilling campaign specifically targeting gold at Wilsons, where previous surface exploration identified a substantial gold-in-soil anomaly covering more than 2.5km by 1.5km.

Maritana said the anomaly remains open along strike and is supported by several indicators of potential gold mineralisation, including recovered gold nuggets, gossanous quartz veins and limited historical gold results from drilling originally focused on nickel.

Historical results within and around the target area include: