Great Southern drilling to measure just how big Southern Star gold can grow

Great Southern’s Southern Star gold project appears to be a significant gold system with previous exploration defining a 700m strike of mineralisation to date.

However, there is plenty of room for further growth given that there is still some 6.7km of strike to the north and south of the existing mineralisation to test.

At least part of this potential will be tested by the 5,000m reverse circulation program that Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN) has just kicked off to test the southern extension, which is positioned on a look-alike magnetic high feature similar to that found at Southern Star.

This will target extensions of previous reverse circulation drilling that returned results such as

17m grading 7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 111m including 2m at 56.7g/t gold
59m at 2.1g/t gold including 9m at 4.5g/t gold and 16m at 3.2g/t gold
7m at 13.9g/t gold including 1m at 91.7g/t gold from 123m

An extensive soil program is also underway to refine the mineralised corridor further along strike.

Adding further interest, Southern Star is located on the same, largely unexplored 12km trend as the Ben Hur and Rosemount deposits within the company’s Duketon gold project about 45km north of Laverton, Western Australia.

While Southern Star has had less than 16,000m of drilling, Regis Resources’ 400,000oz Ben Hur was defined by over 130,000m of drilling.

“The recent exploration success has confirmed Southern Star has all the hallmarks of a large, mineralised gold system with 700m strike of mineralisation defined to date, open in all directions and at depth,” executive chairman John Terpu said.

“The objectives of this next program are to explore extensions of the gold system, with the current geological evidence suggesting the southern corridor to be highly prospective.

“This program ties in with a much larger exploration strategy to explore the full 6.7km strike length north and south of Southern Star with the intention to develop a sizeable resource.

“We are optimistic a resource of size exists at Southern Star and we now are moving into a phase of defining how big the gold deposit will be.”

Southern extension

Previous exploration had identified the southern corridor as being highly prospective with a distinct magnetic high feature directly east of Southern Star that continues to the south with the same intensity and ‘lookalike’ magnetic break.

Downhole multi-element analysis has indicated that molybdenum correlates well with the areas of the best grade.

The main zone mapped by the molybdenum corridor extends both further to the north and strongly to the south.

Current drilling is part of a broader exploration strategy that seeks to test mineralisation along strike to the north and further to the south with concurrent geochemistry and ground truthing programs.

Both areas have seen little to no historical exploration and once the mineralised corridor is defined by geochemistry, RC drilling will be planned to target the corridor along strike into fresh rock where the bulk of the gold mineralisation persists at Southern Star.

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.