ASX-listed gold hopeful, Great Southern Mining, is ready to fire up the RC drill rig again at its historic Cox’s Find gold project about 65km north of Laverton in WA. The Perth-based company has spent the past few months undertaking a geological review of the stellar gold drill hits encountered near the former mine this year. It is now chasing extensions of the high-grade Cox’s Find gold deposit to the south of the old workings at depth where recent drill intersections point to the possible reorientation of the orebody geometry.
According to Great Southern, its Cox’s Find mining leases are highly prospective for repeats of the Cox’s Find orebody along strike from the historical workings that produced 77,000 ounces of gold from 1937 to 1942 with the mined ore averaging a cracking grade of 22 grams per tonne. To that end, the explorer has so far this year pumped a total of 8,216m of RC and diamond drilling into sniffing out the Cox’s Find gold trail.
Not only did that drilling program return some bonanza high-grade gold hits such as 5.65m at 80 g/t gold from 160.05m including 1.1m at a stellar 404 g/t – or 13 ounces to the tonne – from 164.6m, 9m at 5 g/t from 142m, and 2m at 14 g/t from 146m, but it also unearthed a 15m intercept grading 1.01 g/t from 167m the company considers to be significant.
The latter assay result, Great Southern says, opens up an entirely new search space immediately to the south of the high-grade unmined panel delineated by the recent spectacular high-grade drill intersections. Its thickness may be indicative of a mineralised envelope surrounding a nearby high-grade extension to the Cox’s Find deposit.
Great Southern believes the orientation of the high-grade shoots may be wrenching from their generally south-easterly plunge to the southern search space as a result of drag folding of the target lithologies along the main mineralised structures.
In the new round of RC drilling, totalling up to 4,000m that is set to begin in the first week of December 2020, the company plans to vector in on a trio of target areas. They include the intriguing southern space as Great Southern combs for extensions of the Cox’s Find gold deposit into which it will sink five 200m-deep holes.
Another area of interest the company intends testing is the south-east corner of the project area where favourable lithologies are interpreted to fold and intersect the main mineralised structures in a similar fashion to that observed at the historic Cox’s Find gold mine.
Great Southern Mining Chief Executive Officer, Sean Gregory said: “The drilling program seeks to expand on the Cox’s Find high-grade gold mineralisation at depth and test two high-priority near-mine targets for possible repeats along strike. This is part of our broader plans across our portfolio of exploration projects where gold targets are now queueing up for drill testing.”
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By Matt Birney
