Special Report: Maiden drilling at the historic super high-grade Cox’s Find project in WA is kicking off imminently. This could be a company changing moment for explorer Great Southern Mining. 

Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN)  is on a mission to uncover a substantial high grade gold resource at the recently acquired Cox’s Find project in WA.

Like Spectrum Metals’ (ASX:SPX) company defining Penny West (re)discovery, Cox’s Find is a very high-grade historic mine, tragically under-explored by modern standards.

We’re talking about an operation that produced 77,000 ounces at eye-watering grades above 22g/t back in the 1930s and early 40’s.

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Cox’s Find remains an absolute treasure trove to this day. Drilling below 60m depth is virtually non-existent – incredible, after all this time — and yet original owner WMC mined down to 139m.

Instead of drilling, WMC explored by sinking shafts and drives to test the gold content of the mineralised quartz veins by hand; not a very efficient way to do things.

And in the 1930’s gold was selling for about $US34/oz, so to be profitable WMC would ignore any ore grading below ~12g/t.

At today’s gold prices above $US1500/oz, anything +5g/t is generally considered high grade.

Great Southern says that this maiden drilling campaign will target a number of these historically identified but untested ultra-high-grade quartz reefs.

There is real potential that each reef (circled in red, below) hosts in the order of 150,000oz of high-grade gold:

The upcoming 1500m to 2000m drilling program will be a combination of reverse circulation (RC) with diamond drill ‘tails’. This means the first part of the hole is RC, the deeper part diamond.

The maiden targeted drilling program is going to give Great Southern valuable diamond core through the currently defined high-grade part of the deposit and, more excitingly test new predictive structural models increasing the explorer’s understanding of the high-grade gold distribution, structural controls and orientation of the quartz reefs.

“What excites us the most is that our current interpretation suggests real potential that the gold bearing quartz reef mined by WMC all those years ago is one of a series of stacked reefs that just haven’t been found due to the lack of exploration,” executive chairman John Terpu says.

“At these grades, multiple reef targets could mean considerable ounces very quickly.

“It’s all about demonstrating at an early stage that Cox’s Find is an exceptional opportunity for exploration and resource growth to gauge the potential size and viability of the deposit.”

This will then help Great Southern design Phase 2 of the program, with extensive RC and DD drill programs that will aim to extend areas of high-grade gold mineralisation beyond the current workings.

Great Southern has an exploration portfolio packed full of promise, but Terpu says Cox’s Find has become a cornerstone project.

“This drilling campaign is a big deal for us,” he says.

“If you cast your mind back to when Spectrum did that first round of drilling at Penny West – it just confirmed the modelling, everything they had been talking about.

For us, that’s the main objective; to show everyone how exciting this asset is.”

Click here for the latest research report on Great Southern Mining.

This story was developed in collaboration with Great Southern Mining, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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