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Southern Cross Gold confirms best hole to date plus bonanza grades at Sunday Creek project

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By Imelda Cotton - 
Southern Cross Gold ASX SXG Sunday Creek Project Victoria antimony
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Exploration company Southern Cross Gold (ASX: SXG) has confirmed the best hole drilled to date containing a series of bonanza grades at its wholly-owned Sunday Creek project in Victoria.

A “spectacularly wide” and high-grade intersection of gold-antimony mineralisation was returned from the Rising Sun prospect with a best result of 404.4 metres at 5.6 grams per tonne gold equivalent (AuEq) (5.1g/t gold and 0.3% antimony) from 374m (uncut), traversing 13 individual high-grade vein sets.

The company said the hole returned the highest grades ever seen at Sunday Creek and included the best individual intersection, as well as two others in the Top 10.

The Rising Sun area remains open up-dip, down-dip and along strike.

Best results

Best results from drilling at Rising Sun were 5.6m at 17.8g/t AuEq (14.1g/t gold and 2.4% antimony) from 392.2m including 0.2m at 31.5g/t AuEq (31.4g/t gold) from 392.2m; 0.4m at 231.6g/t AuEq (182g/t gold and 31.4% antimony) from 394.2m.

Plus 5.4m at 39.3g/t AuEq (38g/t gold and 0.8% antimony) from 407.7m including 0.4m at 593.6g/t AuEq (574g/t gold and 12.4% antimony) from 407.7m; and 4.9m at 36.1g/t AuEq (20.1g/t gold and 10.1% antimony) from 445.2m including 1.4m at 113.9g/t AuEq (66.6g/t gold and 29.9% antimony) from 445.2m.

Also recorded were high-grade intercepts of 0.3m at 54g/t AuEq (12.1g/t gold and 26.5% antimony) from 449.7m; and 6.9m at 205.2g/t AuEq (204.5g/t gold and 0.4% antimony) from 733.8m including 0.8m at 1,741.5g/t AuEq (1,736.4g/t gold and 3.3% antimony) from 739.9m, 0.4m at 731.2g/t AuEq (731g/t gold and 0.1% antimony) from 739.9m and 0.4m at 2,679.8g/t AuEq (2,670g/t gold and 6.2% antimony) from 740.3m.

Seven intervals reported more than 100g/t gold (up to 2,670g/t); 20 intervals had more than 15g/t gold; and 20 intervals had more than 5% antimony (up to 55.8%).

Impressed by grades

Managing director Michael Hudson was impressed by the grades from Rising Sun.

“This is the best hole drilled at Sunday Creek, with almost three times more contained gold as our previous best hole [and] it is one of the top drill holes drilled globally by any ASX-listed gold company this year,” he said.

“One of our key strategies is to target high grades [and] when this is done in a good deposit, generally more drilling improves the discovery rate of high-grade material… the continuity of gold-bearing structures between the holes at Sunday Creek is encouraging, especially in the hanging wall to the dyke where the better mineralisation appears to be focused at Rising Sun.”

Missing ingredient

Mr Hudson said very high-grade intersections had previously alluded Southern Cross’ exploration efforts.

“Finding seriously high-grades such as 0.4m at 2,670g/t has been, until now, the missing ingredient from Sunday Creek,” he said.

“The project will now be known for its propensity to develop high grades… to have already discovered this many high-grade hits, at this early stage, is an extremely meaningful result.”