Great Southern fires up QLD gold hunt

ASX-listed Great Southern Mining is looking to close the year on a high as it looks to follow up some intriguing gold sniffs at its 1,000 square kilometre Edinburgh Park project in north Queensland. The company’s landholdings in the sunny state are within shouting distance of Evolution Mining’s million-ounce-plus Mt Carlton gold-silver-copper mine and the junior explorer is now bedded down at Edinburgh as it completes grass-roots exploration to work up some potential drill targets.

In the lead up to Christmas Great Southern will be laser focused on thrashing out mapping and geochemical soil sampling programs at its Edinburgh Castle, Molongle and Mt Dillon prospects. The company says work at these prospects will compliment previous targets found at Fish Creek and Leichhardt Creek.

At Fish Creek the company unearthed a suite of illumination targets with “indicative geological alteration footprints” consistent with Mt Carlton-style high sulphidation epithermal mineralisation. Meanwhile, at Leichhardt Creek a pair of large gold-copper systems were identified.

The recent exploration at Edinburgh caps a busy year for the company that is opening up several exploration fronts following the completion of an oversubscribed placement of $2.5 million. Great Southern says it will use its new influx of cash to fund a frenzy of exploration across its tenements.

Even though Queensland will feature front and centre in Great Southern’s latest exploration push its previous work in WA also requires serious follow up.

Results from Great Southern’s maiden drilling campaign at its flagship Southern Star gold deposit in WA included a slew of impressive results. The deposit that sits within the Duketon gold project near Laverton gave up a marathon of solid hits which included a beastly 68-metre intersection going 1.9 grams per tonne gold from just 61m – and that intersection included a higher grade 4m core grading 15.3 grams per tonne gold.

The next best result from Southern Star was a 59m intersection grading 2.1 g/t gold that included a 9m hit going 4.5 g/t gold.

Great Southern has said the strong results from Southern Star extended the mineralisation in all directions and led to the discovery of high-grade gold about 200m south of the previously identified extent of the mineralisation.

The Duketon gold project is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving, with work completed at the Amy Clarke Prospect identifying “kilometre-scale” gold in soil anomalies from exploration completed around June. Interestingly, the prospect sits about 3km south along the same mineralised trend as Regis Resources’ 300,000-ounce Erlistoun gold deposit.

Across the Wider Duketon gold project, the company identified significant gold mineralisation at each of the four regional targets tested. Standout intersections include 8m going 2.1 g/t gold from 32m including a 4m hit grading 3.7 g/t gold.

The next best result from regional drilling included a 5m intersection going 3.3 g/t gold from 49m and included a 1m hit grading 12.3 g/t gold.

Meanwhile, in July at the Mon Ami gold project near Laverton in WA, Great Southern announced an updated mineral resource estimate that remarkably moved 95 per cent of the project’s mineralisation into the indicated category. Great Southern’s developing resource at Mon Ami now stands at 1.56 tonnes grading 1.11 g/t for 55,500 ounces of gold.

The recent exploration work in Queensland caps a busy year for the company, which looks set to use the credibility acquired through its Southern Star project to push it towards bigger and better things. If the company can do just that, things could get interesting come next year.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au