ASX-listed junior gold explorer Great Southern Mining has picked up some solid gold hits from a regional drilling program that is testing a quartet of prospects within its Duketon gold project about 45 kilometres north of Laverton in WA’s north-eastern Goldfields. The most notable of the latest set of drill intersections were 8m going 2.1 grams per tonne gold from 32m including 4m at 3.7 g/t at the Ogilvie’s prospect and 5m grading 3.3 g/t from 49m including 1m at 12.3 g/t at the Golden Boulder prospect.
Other encouraging results included 7m at 1.5 g/t at One Weight Wonder from 99m and 7m at 1.2 g/t from 121m at Erlistoun.
The company says the assays from its recently completed regional reverse circulation drilling campaign comprising 40 holes for an aggregate coverage of 4,754m have come from under-explored areas of the Duketon greenstone belt, which hosts million-ounce deposits.
Great Southern intends evaluating all four regional targets in light of the new drilling data, with re-ranking of the prospects already underway in order to determine the appropriate follow-up exploration plans to be mapped out for each one.
The regional drill hits follow hot on the heels of last month’s avalanche of stand-out gold intercepts that Great Southern returned from a maiden round of RC drilling at its current star of its Duketon project show, the Southern Star deposit.
Spectacular Southern Star intersections have so far included a broad 59m interval tipping the scales at 2.1 g/t gold from 53m that contained higher-grade cores of 9m at 4.5 g/t and 16m at 3.2 g/t.
Another broad intercept of 46m averaged a grade of 1.2 g/t gold from 40m and included an 11m interval registering 3.4 g/t.
A further 7m intersection averaged an impressive grade of 13.9 g/t from 123m and included 1m at 91.7 g/t or almost 3 ounces to the tonne gold.
Other eye-catching recent drill intercepts at Southern Star have been 7m grading 5.3 g/t from 162m including 3m at 11.7 g/t, 9m at 3.3 g/t from 124m including 1m at 24.9 g/t and 27m at 1.5 g/t from 77m including 6m at 5 g/t gold.
Great Southern says some of the stellar drilling results have been generated from outside the previously known extent of near-surface gold mineralisation and also point to Southern Star’s underground potential.
The $24 million market-capped company recently acquired the Duketon project that encompasses more than 450 square kilometres within the gold-bearing Duketon greenstone belt.
Great Southern Mining Chief Executive Officer Sean Gregory said: “These latest results of significant gold mineralisation at multiple targets, highlights the potential of the newly acquired tenements in the Duketon belt.”
Great Southern says Southern Star’s geological characteristics may be analogous to those of Regis Resources’ 390,000-ounce Ben Hur gold deposit 4km north-west along strike of Southern Star on the Rosemont auriferous trend and Regis’ one million ounce-plus Rosemont open-pit and underground gold mine about 24km north-north-west along strike.
Duketon was snapped up by Great Southern in February this year for just $25,000. Southern Star was drilled by previous owners in 2017-18 and gave up a bevy of significant near-surface, high-grade gold assays.
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By Matt Birney
