Great Southern’s drilling has returned thick, gold intersections with high-grade zones at the Southern Star deposit within its Duketon gold project near Laverton, Western Australia.

Results such as 69m at 1.1 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from a down-hole depth of 39m including a higher grade core of 10m at 3.5g/t gold and 13m at 1.3g/t gold from 49m including 2m at 6.9g/t gold were returned from drilling targeting extensions of known mineralisation.

Significantly, it has outlined the strong potential of Southern Star – a big positive given that Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN) has a great example of just what is possible in the Ben Hur deposit just 4km to the north.

Regis Resources’ (ASX:RRL) 390,000oz Ben Hur deposit was defined over several years by over 130,000m of drilling and has now flagged the Rosemont trend as being highly prospective, this prolific trend has produced well over 1.5Moz of resources. Great Southern tenure starts only 1.5km south of Ben Hur with the Southern Star area returning “some very promising results in a setting which is geologically similar to the existing orebodies on the trend”.

This is promising for Southern Star given that it covers 11km of the same trend (Regis has 8km) and has seen just 11,000m of drilling to date, meaning that Great Southern has only scratched the surface of its potential.

Not bad for a tenement that the company acquired for $25,000 in 2021.

Great Southern
Figure 1 Long section of Southern Star highlighting the underexplored and poorly tested areas along strike and at depth.

“Southern Star has again delivered thick, high-grade gold intersections confirming the grade continuity and depth potential of the deposit. The results from our latest drilling program reinforce what is shaping up as a very sizeable gold deposit,” executive chairman John Terpu said.

“The more drilling we do, the more confident we are of this becoming a deposit of substantial size and scale. Mineralisation is open at depth and we are vectoring in with the aid of multielement analysis to start testing the depth potential.

“GSN also has more than 5km of strike to test, north and south, of the known mineralisation at Southern Star and we see this as the first of potentially several deposits to be discovered along this prolific mineralised trend on our 100 per cent owned tenure.”

 

Drilling unlocks potential

Drilling at Southern Star was focused on an area between two high-grade zones that had not been effectively explored previously.

The intersection of thick gold zones with higher grade intersections has now linked these zones, which is expected to have a positive impact on the project’s resource potential.

This gold zone also remains open at depth, which will be a focal point for follow-up drilling, while the successful demonstration of mineralisation is coherent with a resource development opportunity at Southern Star.

Planning is now underway for RC drilling to test both strike extensions and depth potential.

Pending multi-element analysis results from the recent drilling will be used to vector in on mineralisation for targeted drill campaigns through the use of alteration mapping which has been successful in previous drill campaigns.

An extensive multielement soil program – like that used to define the Amy Clarke prospect – is currently underway to the north and south of Southern Star to test the strike further afield of the well-recognised mineralised corridor.

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.