A strategic drilling expenditure increase by Great Southern Mining at it’s underexplored Cox’s Find gold project in WA has paid off in spades with ounce plus hits regularly spinning up out of the depths this year pointing to a potential deep continuation of the gold lodes well below the old historical mine workings.
The project that sits squarely within the well endowed northern goldfields region of Western Australia, has seen its first systematic exploration campaign in more than three decades, with Great Southern’s 17-hole maiden RC drill program stacking up very well against the former owners’ old drilling and production records.
Cox’s Find would indeed appear to have been a good find for the Perth based Great Southern, with a number of excellent drill results being turned out at the project this year.
These include; 8 metres grading 9.43 grams per tonne gold from 73m downhole and 5m grading an ounce to the tonne gold from 134m down-hole – both results include substantially higher grade zones including 1m grading 44g/t and 1m at 143.0g/t gold respectively.
The project is centred around an old open pit and underground mining operation that was mothballed many years ago, around 65km north of Laverton. It produced just under 76,000 ounces at an impressive 22.6g/t gold in its day when WMC mined the underground material by hand, with an incredible cut-off grade of 12g/t gold.
Company Chairman and experienced miner John Terpu said:…“We have a far better understanding of the deposit, its geology and the existence of the remnant ore.”
“We are progressively delineating some exciting structural and regional targets to test as well as examining some near-term development scenarios around potential monetization of the remnant mineralization.” …
“The [drilling] results demonstrate that the project is one of the highest, if not the highest, grading deposits along the immediate strike”.
Gold mineralisation at Cox’s Find is extremely high grade and sitting mainly in quartz vein lodes that are located within and controlled by “drag folds”. Folded rocks are notably repetitive and therefore hold the potential to host repeats of gold lodes – a concept that will undoubtedly be explored by Great Southern in the new year.
Next on the company’s to-do list is a review of all results of the current program with a view to developing a drilling plan, presumably with the intention to wrap a refreshed resource or some economics around the project.
Great Southern has also been awarded $150,000 in Round 20 of the Western Australian Governments Exploration Incentive Scheme’s Co-Funded Exploration Drilling Program for exploring further at Cox’s Find.
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By Matt Birney
