Southern Cross has released two more reasons why it moved to accelerate drilling at its Sunday Creek project in Victoria, further wide and continuous zones of gold-antimony mineralisation.

Not only do the latest two holes SDDSC038 and SDDSC039 – drilled above and below the impressive SDDSC033 which returned an eye-popping 119.2m intersection at 3.2g/t gold and 0.4% antimony – confirm mineralisation over 100m at the Apollo shoot, they also returned the second and fourth best results seen to date.

You can view more about the new holes here: https://youtu.be/2qs9-ovrA2Y

SDDSC039 was drilled 30m below SDDSC033 and returned a 42m interval at 3.5g/t gold and 0.8% antimony from a down-hole depth of 166m including 13m at 10g/t gold and 2.5% antimony while SDDSC038 – drilled 60m above the top hole – struck 15.3m at 2.8g/t gold and 0.9% antimony from 141m.

Significantly for Southern Cross Gold (ASX:SXG), the two holes take the number of >100 AuEq gram-metre intercepts (grade multiplied by intersection width) at Sunday Creek up to 15, highlighting the project’s prospectivity.

Adding further to the company’s joy, SDDSC038 also identified two new veins drilled 70m and 100m further east than previously drilled which returned assays of 1m at 7.5g/t gold and 2.5% antimony from 235m and 0.6m at 0.9g/t gold and 17.4% antimony from 306.3m respectively.

“Bingo! Our expectations have been exceeded with drill holes SDDSC038-39 showing continuity of widths and grade in the Apollo shoot around the earlier spectacular result in SDSC0033,” managing director Michael Hudson said.

“These holes delivered the 2nd and 4th best drill holes – after SDDSC033 – to be drilled into the Sunday Creek project based on cumulative grade x metres. The 3rd best hole (MDDSC025 11.7 m at 18g/t gold equivalent) lies 200 m below SDDSC033, indicating the high grades continue to greater depths.

“We now know that the mineralisation found in SDDSC033, itself spectacular and high grade, extends both above and below that hole with high-grades and wide zones of gold-antimony mineralisation, which further supports Sunday Creek as a significant discovery in the Victorian goldfields.”

Emerging as a major gold play

Sunday Creek is an epizonal-style gold project covering 19,365 hectares of granted exploration tenements just 60km north of Melbourne where some 13,500m of drilling by the company in less than two years has returned some very intriguing drill hits.

To top it off, a 10km mineralised trend which extends beyond the drill area is defined by historical workings and soil sampling has yet to receive any exploration drilling to date.

As is typical for epizonal deposits like Fosterville, gold at the project is hosted in quartz and carbonate veins, with a later intense stibnite-bearing vein and breccia overprint.

A larger arsenic anomaly is also associated with the gold mineralisation. This develops to arsenopyrite-bearing zones with a clear spatial relationship to high-grade gold.

The strong results to date have led the company to effectively increase drill capacity by 250% by optimising rig utilisation from month’s end and adding another drill crew. Two rigs are currently drilling at the Rising Sun and Apollo shoots.

This article was developed in collaboration with Southern Cross Gold, 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.