Great Northern Minerals’ maiden drilling yields excellent gold results

Special Report: Great Northern’s goal of developing a new multi-million ounce gold camp in Queensland is off to a rousing start with very encouraging drill results at Camel Creek.

Top results from the initial 4m composite assays include 24m grading 3.26 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from a depth of 56m within a broader intersection of 52m at 1.9g/t gold, 20m at 2.26g/t gold from 76m and 12m at 4.07g/t gold from 108m.

Gold was encountered in every hole of the program, which Great Northern Minerals (ASX:GNM) managing director Cameron McLean says was the first modern deeper exploration ever undertaken at the Camel Creek project.

“GNM tested 700m of over 4km of mineralisation and the results are very encouraging, especially the continuity of the intercepts over the areas tested,” he added.

“As a result, we have a number of targets to follow up on.”

Drilling has now started at the Big Rush gold project, one of the projects in northern Queensland that it acquired last year.

Initial drill results at Great Northern Minerals’ Camel Creek gold project Pic: Supplied

Camel Creek gold drilling

Great Northern drilled 18 reverse circulation holes totalling 2,516m in its maiden drilling program at Camel Creek.

The new holes were drilled on a nominal 40m spacing over about 700m of the project that had been previously mined to an average depth of between 25m and 30m.

All new holes were drilled into the primary zone below the base of oxidation with an average depth of 140m.

The company is currently waiting on results from the original 1m samples to accurately define and document the intersections indicated from the 4m composite results.

It noted that most of the intersections were associated with a strong mylonite zone trending northeast and in places up to 8m in width and extending along strike over the entire area tested.

Additionally, two parallel zones were intersected in a number of holes, which highlights multiple opportunities for further testing.

Interpretation of the initial results has also suggested the presence of an untested target, the ‘Hinge Zone’, where a number of parallel structures coalesce and where no mining has been conducted.

Developing a major gold camp in North Queensland

Great Northern’s flagship assets include the mothballed Golden Cup, Camel Creek and Big Rush gold mines, which produced a combined +160,000oz at an average grade of 1.9g/t in the 90s.

Location of Great Northern Minerals’ gold projects in Northern Queensland

All three are shallow, open cut mines (12m to 30m deep) that were ‘in mineralisation’ when mining stopped.

The company is looking into the viability of processing 2 million tonnes of previously mined material on existing heap leach pads to deliver early cash flow, an objective that is supported by the presence of third-party toll treatment facilities within trucking distance at Thalanga, Charters Towers and Mt Garnet.

Shallow gold resources of 30,000oz and 47,000oz have already been established at the Golden Cup and Big Rush projects respectively.

However, the real prize is deeper.

Great Northern’s projects have strong, early stage geological analogies with the Fosterville mine in Victoria, a world-class deposit which was only unlocked in 2015 by deeper drilling.

This article was developed in collaboration with Great Northern Minerals, 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.