Great Southern Mining is hitting its straps in northern Queensland, this week saying that it has discovered a new hydrothermal breccia intrusion with elevated gold and silver mineralisation within its emerging Edinburgh Park project.
The Rocky Ponds breccia prospect contains a prospective-looking felsic porphyry “pipe” that is exposed over 100m long and 60m wide and returned rock chip sample results up to 0.38g/t gold and 6.9g/t silver right at surface.
Whilst the grades look modest, such deposits are often leached of their precious metal contents near surface, with economic grades developing as “ore zones” deeper within the pipe’s structure.
The dimensions of the new pipe are not dissimilar to Resolute Mining’s Welcome breccia deposit located 40km to the west, which holds 208,000 ounces of gold.
These styles of deposit tend to have significant vertical extent and are connected to a large, feeder porphyry system at depth.
The Welcome deposit is located from 300-500 metres below surface and continues to at least 800m depth.
That the new find is also only 20km north of Evolution Mining’s Mount Carlton gold operations, which has a total endowment of 1 million ounces of gold and 33 million ounces of silver, is a pretty appealing bit of nearology too.
The Rocky Ponds discovery was located by a reconnaissance geological mapping and sampling campaign and comes just a week after Great Southern reported another large-scale porphyry system covering nearly 6 square kilometres at the Leichardt Creek prospect, a short distance to the northeast.
That intrusive returned surface rock chip samples up to 0.56% copper, 0.12g/t gold and 0.46% molybdenum.
Great Southern Executive Chairman John Terpu said: “The Rocky Ponds breccia prospect is an exciting near-term discovery opportunity for the company and reaffirms our opinion that we have secured a large area of highly prospective and underexplored tenure.”
“The breccia is shaping up technically as a genuine intrusive related gold system, with size, an abundance of gossanous infill and evidence of gold grade. It has analogues elsewhere in the region that are economic and for these reasons we have decided to move quickly to undertake drilling on the target.”
“The breccia pipes along with the large porphyry system announced (last week) provides the company with significant growth potential and discovery opportunities in north Queensland.”
The company is now fast-tracking approvals and consents for RC and diamond drill testing at Rocky Ponds, based on the quality of the exploration target it has unearthed there.
This region of northern Queensland is associated with extensive felsic volcanic activity and intrusions responsible for the formation of numerous tier 1 deposits, like Kidston, Mount Leyshon, Mt Wright, Ravenswood and Mount Carlton, endowed with more than 13 million ounces of gold.
By Matt Birney
