ASX-listed gold explorer, Great Southern Mining, is eyeing an RC drilling program next year over newly-applied-for tenements on the Duketon Greenstone Belt about 60km north of Laverton in WA immediately adjacent to its Cox’s Find gold project. It says the 47.5sqkm tenement package covers more than 12km of “highly prospective” identifiable mineralised trends hosting both the Garden Well and Rosemont gold deposits currently owned and operated by gold producer Regis Resources.
Perth-based Great Southern has already come up with a list of drill-ready prospects following an in-house review of historical exploration data pertaining to the four tenements under application.
Previous exploration activities were undertaken on the tenements by several companies including Sabre Resources, Sons of Gwalia, A1 Minerals, Eagle Eye Metals and Stone Resources Australia.
Great Southern’s compilation of the historical drill data showed 342 holes totalling 12,940m were drilled there. Of that total, RAB drilling made up 288 holes totalling 10,694m testing to a depth of up to only 40m.
With many of the high-grade gold deposits across the Duketon Belt occurring below 50m, the company is hoping to chase down gold mineralisation in what it believes to be relatively underexplored terrane.
A reconnaissance site visit and interpretation of magnetic, geological, geochemical and drill hole datasets resulted in Great Southern identifying its highly ranked Erlistoun Queen, Golden Boulder, Thocklewurst and Amy Clarke target areas.
Great Southern Chief Executive Officer, Sean Gregory said: “These tenement applications are considered highly prospective following a comprehensive in-house review. The Erlistoun Queen trend has had no systematic deep drilling on it whatsoever, which is remarkable considering just how many deposits in the Duketon Belt are found along these conspicuous mineralised structures.”
“We are also interested in what has come to light from the previous soil survey which produced kilometre-scale targets positioned under cover that have seen no follow-up exploration.”
The Erlistoun Queen trend takes in a 2km-long set of old workings consisting of more than 50 shallow shafts. Historic gold production at Erlistoun Queen was estimated at 1,915 tonnes ore going a cracking 28.6 grams per tonne gold for 1,761 ounces and mainly took place between 1901 and 1955.
Significant intersections from historic shallow drilling at Erlistoun Queen were 8m grading 2.9 g/t gold from 8m including 2m at 4.3 g/t, 6m at 1.3 g/t from 15m including 3m at 2.1 g/t, and 4m at 1.7 g/t from 12m including 2m at 2.4 g/t.
Regis recently acquired from Stone Resources the 290,000-ounce gold Ben Hur gold deposit, which Great Southern says occurs along the same mineralised structure that plays hosts to its new landholdings contiguous to Cox’s Find as well as Regis’ Rosemont deposit. Cox’s Find is located along strike from and within 12km of Regis’ multimillion-ounce Garden Well gold mine.
Great Southern hopes to secure approvals for the tenement applications from the WA Mines Department early in calendar 2021 and kick off a possible maiden drilling program over the new ground in the second half of the year after refining the target areas.
Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
