Great Southern has uncovered evidence of widespread mineralisation across its Duketon Belt tenements with bedrock gold intersected at all four regional targets tested.

Drilling hit significant gold at the Ogilvie’s, Golden Boulder, One Weight Wonder and Erlistoun targets in the company’s newly acquired tenements in an underexplored portion of the Duketon, which includes the +1Moz Rosemont and the 390,000oz Ben Hur deposits.

Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN) said that standout intersections at each prospect include:

  • 8m at 2.1 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 32m including 4m at 3.7g/t gold at Ogilvie’s;
  • 5m at 3.3g/t gold from 49m including 1m at 12.3g/t gold at Golden Boulder;
  • 7m at 1.5g/t gold from 99m including 3m at 2.5g/t gold at One Weight Wonder; and
  • 7m at 1.2g/t gold from 121m including 2m at 3.3g/t gold at Erlistoun.

“These latest results of significant gold mineralisation at multiple targets, highlights the potential of the newly acquired tenements in the Duketon Belt,” chief executive officer Sean Gregory said.

“These four target areas were developed from an extensive review and development of our exploration strategy to progress multiple projects concurrently using an exploration pipeline.

“Intersecting high grades at all four target areas demonstrates that our strategy is working and we are focusing our exploration in areas leveraged to success.”

Further assay results from drilling at the Southern Star deposit are also pending.

great southern tenure tenements prospects southern star gold
Plan view highlighting GSN tenure and the regional Prospects and Southern Star Project. Pic: Supplied

Regional Drilling

The 4,754m reverse circulation program was carried out to test the four prospects, which were identified through the analysis of an extensive regional dataset incorporating more than 12,000 drill holes and 24,000 soil samples along with the company’s geochemistry programs to test for further anomalism.

At One Weight Wonder, significant intersections correlate to a chert-rich lithology within a sediment package similar to that seen at Garden Well as well as the orientation of regional mineralised structures that host all major deposits in the Duketon Belt.

Bedrock mineralisation was intersected at four separate locations indicating that mineralisation is primary in nature and open at depth and along strike.

Mineralisation at Golden Boulder is interpreted to extend south along strike from a set of old workings into GSN tenements where it is obscured by cover.

Great Southern’s drilling to date has indicated that this mineralisation persists for at least 300m south into its tenement.

Meanwhile, drilling at Ogilvie’s has confirmed a coherent trend over a 500m strike length with mineralisation occurring within gold-bearing quartz veins in sheared mafic and high magnesium content basalt.

The company’s drilling at Erlistoun was exploratory in nature at the Erlistoun Main line and Erilstoun East line to follow-up on historical shallow rotary air blast and aircore intersections in close proximity to two parallel lines of workings.

Standout intersections were made at the northern extent of the Main line of workings.

Future work

Great Southern will now evaluate all drill results across the four targets with the goal of progressing them through the exploration pipeline.

Re-ranking of the prospects is also underway to determine the appropriate follow-up exploration programs for each of them.

Additionally, the regional drill campaign enables the company to generate a kilometre-long cross-section of the bedrock lithology, allowing it to identify new targets and improve its understanding of the Duketon Belt.

Multi-element analysis of these holes is underway to assist in identifying alteration signatures and consolidate the geology of the district.

The company will carry out a field workshop in October to evaluate the structural architecture of the Laverton district and the implications on its project portfolio.

This is also expected to aid in target evaluation and identify additional targets for the next regional exploration program.

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.

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