Great Southern jags shallow high-grade WA gold over 4.5kms

Great Southern Mining’s latest aircore drilling campaign has lit up its Duketon gold project near Laverton in Western Australia, revealing a huge 4.5 kilometre corridor of shallow high-grade gold hits at the company’s Amy Clarke prospect. 

Topping the results was a 2m strike grading a whopping 23.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold - a standout strike that, according to the company, has now propelled Amy Clarke to the top of Great Southern’s exploration hit list. 

The hit came from the very edge of the southernmost drill line in a spot with no prior drilling, leaving the gold system wide open to the south. 

The company has now completed 8,000 metres of aircore drilling across a 6 kilometre stretch, with assays now received for 3,500m. Other standout results include one hole that intersected 11m running at 1.2g/t gold from 25m, including a 6m section going 1.7g/t gold. A third hole hit 2m grading 1.5g/t from 30m, confirming continuous mineralisation within semi-fresh rock from surface. 

The funding for the current aggressive drilling campaign across Duketon has come largely thanks to a well-timed deal in August to sell a mining licence to Regis for $4 million, which could ultimately swell to $9 million if future milestones are met.

The company says the fresh assays have added valuable data to its 2021 campaign that turned up standout hits such as 8m at 6.73g/t gold from 32m and 4m at 2.13g/t gold from surface. 

Combined, the results appear to be painting the picture of a broad, shallow gold system stretching almost 5 kilometres in length and mirroring the surface anomaly previously revealed in soil sampling.

Remarkably, this is only Great Southern’s second pass over the broader Amy Clarke prospect - an area barely scratched since Sons of Gwalia’s shallow rotary air-blast work back in the 1990’s.

The current program was drilled on 100m by 400m-spaced lines, with holes about 25m apart and averaging 40m deep. Results for another 4,500m of drilling, mostly from the northern end of the prospect, are still in the lab and due later this month. 

Great Southern says it plans to follow up the current aircore drill program with a targeted reverse-circulation (RC) drilling campaign in early 2026 to chase the higher-grade zones now emerging.

Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane said: “Given the extensive strike length of the Amy Clarke surface gold anomaly and the prospect’s location on known gold bearing structures, Great Southern sees significant gold potential at Amy Clarke.” 

Importantly, since the newly discovered shallow gold hits are hosted in semi-fresh rock it gives Great Southern a firsthand look at the host geology and the key structures driving the mineralisation.

The company says the mineralisation appears to sit in several related settings, including quartz veins within shear zones and along the contact line between the volcanic and sedimentary rocks, where old intrusions have reacted with mineral-rich fluids. 

In short, the findings point to a classic multi-phase gold system typical of the Duketon Greenstone Belt, where flowing fluids along big shear zones tend to concentrate the gold.

Adding to Amy Clarke’s appeal, the prospect sits just eight kilometres north of Regis Resources’ Garden Well mill and only 3.5 kilometres south of Regis’ Erlistoun open pit - a mine that has already churned out more than 320,000 ounces of gold and is hosted in strikingly similar geology.

Elsewhere, Great Southern is also hard at work on a 7,000m RC drilling blitz at its nearby Golden Boulder prospect. 

The historic Golden Boulder ground is littered with more than 50 old workings across 3.7 kilometres of strike and once produced gold at an eye-popping average of 29g/t. 

Sitting on the same north–south structure as Regis’ Rosemont, Ben Hur and Baneygo deposits, Golden Boulder is shaping up as a serious follow-up prize.

Although Duketon maybe stealing the headlines right now, Great Southern has also placed a big bet on a copper-gold discovery in Queensland.

Together with its heavyweight partner, South African gold giant Gold Fields, the pair have rolled the dice with a high-impact diamond drilling campaign at Edinburgh Park in Far North Queensland. 

The global major is chasing two standout IP targets, dubbed Leichhardt Creek and Mt Dillon, which both show all the hallmarks of large, intrusion-related gold-copper-silver systems.

With shallow gold already lighting up the maps at Amy Clarke, momentum building at Golden Boulder and deep copper-gold targets now on the radar in Queensland, Great Southern Mining has plenty of irons in the fire. 

As the next batch of assays come in and the rods keep spinning well into 2026, Great Southern looks set to deliver lots of news flow. With the whiff of a new discovery in the air from both sides of the country, the company looks set write its next big chapter.

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