Special Report: 2020 was a formative year for the company. 2021 could be the year Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN) breaks out.

Great Southern has three gold projects, one in North Queensland and two in the Laverton region of WA, that comfortably stand on their own as sensational exploration and development opportunities.

In August, the explorer appointed a new chief exec: Sean Gregory, a geologist with over 20 years’ experience in developing projects and supporting mining operations with BHP Iron Ore, Murchison Metals and Mineral Resources.

“These three core projects give great Southern Mining a nice balance,” Gregory says.

“The Edinburgh project in Queensland is elephant country. This is frontier exploration with enormous discovery potential.

“In Laverton, we are looking to extend and replicate the historic, super high grade Cox’s Find mine and move Mon Ami into production.”

This time next year Great Southern would love to be celebrating a true company making mineral discovery.

“That is always the objective, but always with one eye on the process,” Gregory says.

“The big prize is out there – we just have to keep working methodically through our process.

“If we do that; if we approach our exploration work in the same manner as we have done, then those big discoveries are just around the corner.”

Cox’s Find

A drilling program in Laverton region will continue over the next few months with an initial 5,400m committed at the exciting Cox’s Find and Mon Ami projects.

Great Southern is drilling for extensions and repeats of the super high grade Cox’s Find mine, which produced ~77,000oz at 22g/t between 1937 and 1942.

The objective of the current drilling program at Cox’s Find is twofold, Gregory says.

“First, we are drilling at the base of the Cox’s Find workings themselves, where we had tremendous success this year,” he says.

“We had four or five very high grade intersections including 5m at 80g/t, and 1m at 404m from 164m.

“Part of the objective of the current program is to test whether that high grade ‘panel’ has actually bent around to the southern end, which is what we suspect might be happening.”

Objective number two is to move down to the southern end of the tenement to look for ‘repeats’ of the Cox’s Find orebody.

“If we do hit anything good in the southern part of that tenement it would be far more significant,” Gregory says.

“It would mean finding a virgin deposit in true discovery country.”

Mon Ami

The drilling program will also test new targets at near-term development opportunity Mon Ami.

The development of the 59,000oz Mon Ami gold project in WA may deliver bonus early cashflow, the company says.

Over 2,000m of drilling has occurred at Mon Ami since that resource was estimated in 2018.

Recent drilling hit thick, shallow high grades like 11m at 7.9 g/t gold from 26m, including 4m at 15.9g/t.

Great Southern wants to extend these high-grade zones. But there is also a discovery play at Mon Ami.

Drilling will hunt deeper high-grade targets similar to the nearby ‘Ida H’ high-grade underground mine.

Ida H – which started as a small open pit and evolved into an underground development — produced 172,000oz at 22.6 g/t down to 480m in the early 1900s.

“Ida H had a very similar surface presentation, with a high grade ‘tap root’,” Gregory says.

“If Mon Ami is anything like Ida H it could be a significant underground mining opportunity.”

The assay labs in WA are running a four- to five-week turnaround at the moment, Gregory says, so February is when Great Southern expects to get the first of the drilling results from Cox’s Find and Mon Ami.

“We will see that come through in about three or four batches in February and March,” he says.

Over 2021, Mon Ami will progress through the various development milestones.

“I’m certainly targeting that we will have an approval in place for Mon Ami [next year],” Gregory says.

“That could very possibly result in an agreement with a nearby mill to monetise that asset. It is something we will be working very hard on.”

Edinburgh: Elephant country

The 1,000sqkm Edinburgh project surrounds Evolution’s low cost, 107,000ozpa Mt Carlton mine in North Queensland.

This is true frontier exploration, Gregory says.

“It is real elephant country up there, where deposits all tend to be north of a million ounces,” he says.

Great Southern is hunting for a Mt Carlton of its own on highly prospective ground where less than 15 per cent has been explored using modern techniques.

The explorer is approaching this project methodically.

“It has been a real data collection phase from August to December. Now we have a workshop planned in the new year with some expert consultants to go through and review that data,” Gregory says.

“If we see hotspots lighting up in each of those different disciplines – like geophysics, geochemistry, structural geology – if we get three green lights that becomes a drilling target for us.

“I’m pretty confident that we will have more drill targets than we can handle. We will pick the best ones for Q2 drilling campaign.”

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This article was developed in collaboration with Great Southern Mining, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.