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Wiluna Mining announced on 28 October that underground resource development drilling had started at Happy Jack Lower within the Wiluna Gold Mine in Western Australia. The initial campaign targets approximately 400,000 ounces currently classified as inferred mineral resources, with the aim of collecting enough information to support a possible move to the indicated category.
The planned infill spacing is approximately 40 metres by 40 metres. Wiluna expects the Happy Jack Lower work to take about three months before the rig moves to other underground resource conversion targets. Both the schedule and the proposed classification upgrade depend on the drilling and subsequent geological assessment.
The campaign forms part of a planned 80,000-metre underground drilling programme intended to support conversion of about 1.5 million ounces across the wider project. The company described the lower Happy Jack area as needing denser drilling to improve confidence and inform future mine planning, technical studies and restart assessments.
Wiluna cited a global mineral resource of 7.1 million ounces, including a 4.95-million-ounce underground resource. These existing estimates provide project context and are not new production or ore reserve figures. The announcement explicitly cautions that drilling may not upgrade inferred material to indicated status; the start of drilling therefore should not be treated as a completed resource conversion or a mine restart decision.