Great Southern Mining looks like it has stumbled onto one of those classic WA gold stories where persistence, position and a bit of geological nous collide. Its Golden Boulder discovery near Laverton is again delivering shallow, punchy gold hits, right between some of the biggest names and deposits in the Duketon belt.
Great Southern Mining has continued to build a serious head of steam at its Golden Boulder discovery. The latest drilling has churned out shallow, high-grade gold from its Duketon gold project in the Eastern Goldfields, one of Western Australia’s most proven gold neighbourhoods.
Conducted in late 2025, assays from the first 27 reverse circulation (RC) holes of the 56-hole program are already pointing to a system with both serious grade and meaningful scale - and notably, the gold appears to start straight from surface.
Standout hits from the first batch of results included 6 metres at 6.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 48m, featuring a 1m spike at a hefty 34.5g/t gold. Another hole turned up an impressive 1-metre section running at 23.9g/t gold within a 5-metre haul grading 5.1g/t gold from 25m.
These latest results have thrown fuel on the fire, to add to previous RC campaigns at Golden Boulder, which have returned notable intersections such as 5m at 14.57 g/t gold from 41m, including a 1-metre slice running at a whopping 70.94g/t gold. Other hits shone with 2m going at 12.56g/t gold from a depth of 99m and 4m grading 5.64g/t gold from 63m, all inspiring plenty of confidence in the current program.
Historic workings at Golden Boulder between 1900 and 1955 also returned stellar grades, with a recorded 1,915 tonnes mined at an average 28.6g/t for 1,761 ounces of the yellow metal. Unrecorded mined gold is likely to be much more.
Great Southern says historical drilling at the site has been shallow and sparse at best, with very few holes exceeding 40m, meaning this is the first time the ground has had a proper workout, with the early signs suggesting the old-timers may have only scratched the surface.
Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane said: “Early drilling results from the late-2025 RC program at Golden Boulder have delivered a very strong start, reinforcing our confidence in the continuity of shallow, high-grade mineralisation in the northern portion of the 3.7km prospective trend. It is shaping up to be a very exciting gold discovery in a prolific gold-producing region.”
Geologically, the gold is hosted in a fractionated dolerite - a lookalike to the Kalgoorlie’s fabled Golden Mile. Stacked lodes at Golden Boulder occur within the Rosemont fault zone, a 60-kilometre-long structure that hosts multiple gold deposits owned by ASX-listed Regis Resources. Those include the two-million-ounce Rosemont gold mine and the 380,000-ounce Baneygo deposit, both key parts of Regis’ broader Duketon gold camp.
Along the same Rosemont fault corridor, Great Southern is also chasing gold at its Amy Clarke prospect, another emerging exploration play that is quickly moving up the priority list.
Shallow aircore drilling and soil geochemistry have defined a 5-kilometre surface gold anomaly. An exploration campaign in 2021 returned 8m grading a solid 6.73g/t gold from 32m, which included an excellent 4-metre intercept running at 12.5g/t gold. Another hole hit 4m going at 2.13g/t gold from surface.
A long-overdue follow-up air-core program in 2025 at Amy Clarke then intersected 17m grading 1.4g/t gold, including 1m at 11.2g/t gold.
With a further 29 holes yet to return assays, there’s clearly more to come from Golden Boulder in the near term. Those holes sit further south along the Rosemont Fault, where drilling density remains sparse and the system remains open - prime real estate for extensions.
Great Southern is also lining up a deeper diamond drilling program, co-funded under WA’s Exploration Incentive Scheme, to test Golden Boulder at depth while continuing RC work along strike. If the stacked lodes occur as regularly and to depth as the lodes do in Kalgoorlie, then Golden Boulder could quickly shift from “interesting discovery” to “serious resource candidate”.
In a belt famous for turning modest prospects into long-life operations, Great Southern’s Golden Boulder is shaping up as a discovery with genuine legs — shallow, high-grade and sitting in exactly the right postcode.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
