Great Southern Mining is readying the drill bit for its Mon Ami gold project near Laverton in Western Australia, with the company identifying multiple targets for resource extension and deeper high-grade zones at the mine-ready prospect.
The company has initiated a detailed technical review of Mon Ami to speed up exploration that could lift the existing 55,500-ounce deposit, grading a handy 1.11 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.
Great Southern says Mon Ami’s mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth, with drilling so far concentrated within the known resource outline and leaving plenty of ground untested.
Drilling is now scheduled to kick off in April, focusing on shallow repeats and depth extensions at the deposit. Coinciding with work programs running in parallel at the company’s nearby Duketon gold project.
Management says recent aircore drilling has already flagged the possibility of parallel lodes offset from the primary structure, particularly in its Blanc Platt area, which returned 2 metres at 1.86g/t gold from 20 metres. That result sits alongside a series of historic shallow intercepts that point to an emerging parallel zone, including 2m at 4.8g/t gold from 70m, 2m at 3.23g/t gold from 100m and wider intervals such as 11m at 0.64g/t gold from 40m.
Follow-up drilling will aim to trace these surface expressions down plunge along the Barnicoat Shear Zone.
Deeper opportunities are also in focus, with only limited drilling below 150m to date. Indeed, many of the best intercepts have come from the depths, including 10m at 2.7g/t gold from 241m, alongside a 21-metre hit going 1.0 g/t gold from 255m.
The company views the Ida H deposit, 8 kilometres north along the same Barnicoat Shear and owned by Genesis Minerals, as the closest analogue for Mon Ami's depth potential.
Ida H was one of the highest-grade producers in the Laverton district, delivering 229,900 tonnes at 22.6 g/t gold for 170,650 ounces from underground in the early 1900’s.
Its quartz-sulphide veins appear to pinch and swell with a northern plunge within the shear zone, mirroring features seen at Mon Ami.
Mineralisation at Mon Ami stretches across at least 700m of strike in a north-south vertical lode tied to the Barnicoat Shear Zone.
The project benefits from a granted mining licence and a special licence for a haulage route to the Elora-Mount Weld sealed road. Its location places Mon Ami within a 50-kilometre trucking radius of several operating and planned gold mills, including the Granny Smith facility just 10km away.
In the near term, planning for April’s resource expansion is the main priority, with possible development studies in the Laverton district likely to follow.
Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane said: “We have successfully achieved all desired outcomes, including significant strike extensions to known mineralisation, improving continuity of mineralisation in the north of the prospect and defining new mineralisation in previously undrilled areas in the south. Importantly, drilling to date is still very shallow.”
On the opposite side of the continent, work programs are also ramping up to attack Great Southern’s big Queensland gold project at Edinburgh Park.
The 1560-square-kilometre joint venture with Gold Fields has the gold mining giant spending $15 million on Great Southern’s ground to earn up to a 75 per cent interest by funding exploration.
The company initially outlined more than 25 high-priority targets across the big tenement package, focusing on potential large epithermal and intrusion-related gold systems, as well as porphyry-related gold-copper opportunities.
Drilling is scheduled to resume after the north Queensland wet season, likely in March, with initial plans calling for at least two deep diamond holes to test the core of a geophysical anomaly and beneath it.
With strong logistics at Mon Ami and resource growth drilling now on the horizon, Great Southern’s dual Australian gold stories could be looking at cash flows from toll-treating a lot sooner than expected.
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By Andrew Todd
