Great Southern Mining has hit high grade gold at the Southern end of its Amy Clarke prospect in WA. Drilling intersections correlate with gold in soil anomalies and set the scene for a renewed hunt for grade at the Southern end of the prospect. The company says the fact that the high grade intersections were in bedrock suggests the source of the gold may be close by.
It is also anticipating multi-element analysis from the bottom of the hole to guide future exploration of deeper drill targets.
Great Southern pumped out a 172-hole 5,586 metre air core campaign in December to assess the gold potential of the kilometre-scale gold anomaly detected in soil samples last September and management says the drilling program has been highly successful in locating gold anomalism as indicated by the soil sampling.
The explorer points to results it says define a trend that can be traced through the Amy Clarke prospect where every line drilled, bar one, intersected anomalous gold.
The standout intersection was an 8m hit grading 6.73 grams per tonne gold from 32m including 4m at a solid 12.5 g/t gold.
The latest results represent the first high-grade gold intersected at the prospect and the company considers that to be an indication that Amy Clarke may host a gold deposit of economic significance.
Great Southern Mining Chief Executive Officer, Sean Gregory, said: “These new shallow aircore results are an exciting development for the Amy Clarke Prospect. The geological team have spent the last year progressing this area from a conceptual target to now an area that has intersections of high-grade gold. It also demonstrates that the methodology employed by the exploration team is working to progress our projects towards discovery. We are still waiting on bottom of hole multielement analysis and 1m gold assay data from the mineralised aircore intervals that will be used to vector in on the areas of interest which will require further drill testing.”
Great Southern says its drilling results indicate the gold is located in “sheared basalt” with quartz veining in fresh bedrock beneath the weathered zone where the soil anomalies were encountered.
Given that only 24 holes have been drilled deeper than 40 metres, further deep drilling is required to define a mineable resource at Amy Clarke according to the company. Other encouraging evidence for further exploration of the prospect includes the correlation of geophysical anomalies with soil samples and drilling results in addition to outcrops of banded iron formation ridges in the area.
According to Great Southern, the geological and geophysical indications demonstrate that Amy Clarke is on trend with the Erlistoun gold deposit to the north that yielded 322,000 ounces grading 1.9 g/t gold for Regis Resources Limited.
Amy Clarke is located within Great Southern’s Duketon project about 45km north of Laverton in WA’s productive North-Eastern Goldfields. The project covers more than 450 square kilometres of the multi-million-ounce gold-bearing Duketon greenstone belt.
It may be early in the journey for Great Southern at its Amy Clarke prospect and clearly there is more work to do as it looks to replicate the high-grade hit in the South of the mineralised trend. However, the latest results show the company’s reason for optimism about what lies beneath the current tested area, particularly at the southern end of the trend.
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By Matt Birney
