Pic: John W Banagan / Stone via Getty Images
The drill bit is spinning at Great Southern’s historic 21g/t Cox’s Find project
Mining
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Special Report: Great Southern Mining is now drilling the historic high-grade gold mine at Cox’s Find, which “has all the hallmarks of a potential modern-day underground development”.
An extensive reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drill program will build on Great Southern’s (ASX:GSN) recent drilling success at the historic high-grade gold mine, which produced 77,000 ounces at more than 21 grams per tonne (g/t) between 1935 and 1942.
A late 2019 drilling program proves that high-grade gold mineralisation remains in the mine, with sections of the underground development still untested.
There were numerous standout results from this drilling, including 8m at 9.43g/t gold from 73m, including 1m at 44g/t.
Great Southern’s chief operating officer Mark Major says this extremely high-grade deposit “has all the hallmarks of a potential modern-day underground development”.
“This will be the first intensive drill program targeting the down plunge extensions of the deposit and the first diamond drill program targeting the high-grade lode,” Major says.
“This program should enhance our structural understanding of the deposit and assist with advancing the forthcoming drill programs at the Cox’s Find deposit and support targeting repeat structures within our tenure.”
The drilling program will be in two phases.
Phase one will consist of approximately 5000m of RC drilling and 500m of diamond core drilling focusing on delineating the extent of this previously announced high-grade gold at Cox’s Find.
The RC drill rig is on site and has commenced drilling, while the diamond drill rig is expected to arrive on site within a week.
This diamond drilling can tell Great Southern a lot more about the orebody than RC does, and will help the company understand the ‘structural controls’ of the high-grade mineralisation.
No diamond core drilling has been undertaken through the shear zone or into the main lode of Cox’s Find and this will be the maiden drill program of this nature, the company says.
Great Southern believes this program will aid in the refinement of the geological model and assist in future drilling of the untested targets at Cox’s Find.
Phase two will consist of 4000m of RC drilling focusing on several of the near mine untested geological ‘look-alike’ targets.
These initial targets, which have never been drilled, could host an additional 480,000oz at grades of between 15 and 25g/t gold.
Ranking of the targets is now underway.
Between these phases a 3000m drill program testing the extensions of the mineralization along strike of the current resource will be undertaken at the company’s Mon Ami gold project, located 12km from Laverton, WA.
Major commented that this project has a large upside and it is clear zones of high grade gold exist within the system from the initial resource work. What is not clear is how expansive the mineralisation trend goes along strike. There are historical working along strike and our mapping has revealed some interesting upside potential.
