Great Southern Mining unearths visible gold at Cox’s Find, responds to ASX price query
Multiple occurrences of visible gold has been observed in diamond drill core at the WA project.
Junior explorer Great Southern Mining (ASX: GSN) has uncovered multiple occurrences of visible gold mineralisation in diamond drill core at the Cox’s Find gold project in Laverton, Western Australia.
The company emerged from a trading halt today to reveal the find, which is yet to be analysed but is believed to indicate the potential high-grade nature of the Cox’s Find deposit.
The core came from one of two diamond holes drilled at the project since an extensive exploration program began in mid-June.
Drilling was designed to intersect an area of known high-grade mineralisation that was previously identified in a 2019 drilling campaign, which yielded results including 5m at 31.23 grams per tonne of gold from 134m, including 1m at 143g/t gold.
The visible gold announced to the market today was observed between the 164.6m-165.8m interval within a multi-phased quartz vein host.
Great Southern Mining chief operating officer Mark Major said seeing multiple occurrences of visible gold in drill core is “always a good sign”.
“This is the first diamond core that has been drilled through the mineralised sequence and gives an invaluable insight to the geological setting and the potential existence of high-grade mineralisation,” he said.
“The geological team are processing the core now, to get as much information as possible from the core in order to understand the structural orientation of the mineralisation and to unlock the geological model to aid future drill campaigns,” Mr Major added.
Pending results
Processing of the diamond drill core – both that which revealed visible gold and the core from the other hole – is underway with the first core expected to be cut and sent for assaying within the week.
The company plans to drill three more holes during this current phase of diamond drilling.
Assay results are also pending for about 4,600m of reverse circulation (RC) drilling completed at the project.
A 4,000m phase two RC drilling program will focus on several other near-mine targets and follow up on results from the initial phase.
In addition, Great Southern Mining plans to start a 2,000-3,000m drilling program at its nearby Mon Ami gold project this week.
ASX price query
Great Southern Mining requested a trading halt on Monday, pending the release of today’s announcement, after receiving a price query from the ASX.
The query asked if the recent trading of Great Southern Mining’s securities, which saw the price rise 52% from $0.099 at Friday’s close to a high of $0.15 on Monday, would suggest information may have ceased to be confidential.
In its response, the company referred to the commencement of its Cox’s Find drilling program in early June and said the notification on Friday by Great Southern Mining’s exploration manager that visible gold has been recovered was considered “confidential”. In any case, it requested the trading halt upon receiving the price query.