Growing up in a mining family, there was never any doubt where Iceni Gold's executive chairman Brian Rodan would end up making his mark. An experienced underground miner and contract mining owner/operator, Rodan has more than 40 years of experience in the industry and has an eye for solid investments.

"Even though I'm a mining contractor, I'm obviously a prospector at heart," Rodan said. "I have been a very prolific pegger on a number of projects over the years."

Rodan was the previous owner and managing director of Australian Contract Mining (ACM), a mid-tier contracting company that was sold to another gold firm in 2017.

Rodan was also the founding director of Dacian Gold and executive director of Eltin Ltd. For the past few years, he has been making waves across Australasia as the managing director/executive director of Siren Gold Ltd, as well as Iceni Gold Ltd.

Iceni Gold was admitted to the ASX on April 12 this year, with the company commencing official quotation two days later on April 14. Prior to the exchange listing, Iceni Gold raised A$20million under its prospectus offer of 100,000 shares at an issue price of AUD$0.20 per share.

The initial public offering (IPO) enabled the company to commence drilling and additional exploration work at its 14 Mile Well Gold Project in Western Australia (WA) with a world-class exploration team led by technical director and expert geologist David Nixon.

"The project here in WA, it's situated near some of the largest goldmines here," Rodan said, adding that the company has already identified six priority targets at the tenement - Claypan, Deep Well, North 1, Danjo NE, Everleigh Well, and Guyer Well.

Encompassing 320,000sq km, the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia is one of the world's most well-known mining regions.

Sitting on top of some of the world's richest gold deposits, the area has been explored for more than a century - there have been plenty of discoveries in that period, too. Near Iceni Gold's 14 Mile Well project are the Granny Smith/Wallaby, Mt Morgans and Sunrise Dam gold mines.

Iceni Gold's 14 Mile Well project covers an area of approximately 600sq km between the historical mining centres of Leonora and Laverton.

With its close proximity to the Goldfields gas pipeline, as well as access to the main roads, the 14 Mile Well project is 70km southwest from the town of Laverton, which provides air transportation to nearby Kalgoorlie and WA's capital city, Perth.

After drilling began at the Deep Well target on June 7 this year, Iceni Gold started to receive the results of the first three diamond drill holes, which intersect multiple narrow zones of intense alteration across a 200km strike. The drill cores have been sent off to be assayed.

The Deep Well target area is situated in the northwestern part of the company's tenement and includes extensive transported cover. Anomalous gold had been previously identified at Deep Well on previous drilling expeditions, with several drill holes exposing sulphides hosted by granodiorite intrusive finding best results of 5 metres at 3.32 grams of gold per tonne.

The other priority targets include the Claypan in the northern part of the project, which was previously explored for base metals approximately 50 years ago. Despite the lack of previous exploration in the area, modern technology used in recent gold exploration has shown the area is a viable target.

Just to the east of the Deep Well target lies the North One target, which is covered by areas of in-situ regolith cut by transported cover to the north and east. North One is the second target scheduled for drilling after Deep Well.

In the northeast lies the Danjo NE target, which is underlain by granitic rocks of the Danjo Batholith. The veins here are situated within a corridor that links to veins in the North One target.

Recent field work discovered outcropping quartz veins at the Everleigh Well target, which is located on the 28km-long Castlemaine Fault. Drilling has also been scheduled at the site.

The final target is the 15km-long Guyer Shear. Early analysis shows gold potential over three separate anomalous zones.

The 14 Mile Well project contains five granted exploration licences, 155 granted prospecting licenses and one granted mining lease. Iceni Gold has also applied for an additional six prospecting licences and three mining leases.

With Rodan at the helm, exploration activities at the site were started by MCA in 2017 before the project's sale to Iceni Gold in December last year. Across the site, the company discovered four gold mineralisation styles including intrusion, related gold, orogenic lode gold, granitoid hosted gold and epithermal gold.

Rodan pegged the area knowing there was a lot of potential for gold mining, adding there are around 50 million ounces of gold to be explored. In order to form the project, Rodan worked with several other prospectors to join the tenements together and form a large continuous land package on the western side of Lake Carey. A majority of the tenements were purchased from MCA, a company also held by Rodan, while the remaining tenements were acquired from other prospectors or applied for by the company.

"I dealt with maybe 20 or 30 prospectors to put 180 tenements together, something that's never been done before," Rodan said. "The ground there has never been owned by one single company before, and we've just started drilling a few weeks ago. That's taken me nearly five and a half years to do that".

Rodan has been kept busy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, managing two gold projects across the Tasman Sea, but it is clear to see how highly valued both projects are for him.

"They're different projects, different companies, but each with significant potential in their own right," Rodan said. "For me, it's important to get them established, get them on the straight and narrow and prove to people how great the project is.

"Then it grows and we can bring in the right people to deliver the project where it needs to go at that point in time, hopefully after we have made a significant major discovery. My tip is it won't be that far away, so it could be a very merry Christmas."