Mining

Southern Cross Gold hits high-grade gold-antimony zones at Sunday Creek project

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By Imelda Cotton - 
Southern Cross Gold ASX SXG gold antimony Victoria drilling Sunday Creek Apollo

Latest assays from Sunday Creek returned up to 130g/t gold and 25.1% antimony.

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Southern Cross Gold (ASX: SXG) has hit wide and high-grade gold-antimony zones in two holes at the wholly-owned Sunday Creek project in Victoria.

The holes demonstrate continuous mineralisation over 100m in the Apollo shoot with more than a dozen high-grade intersections of up to 130 grams per tonne gold and 25.1% antimony with abundant visible gold.

One hole uncovered 42m at 4.8g/t gold equivalent (3.5g/t gold and 0.8% antimony from 166m.

Within this were numerous higher grade zones of 1m at 23.7g/t gold equivalent (19.8g/t gold and 2.5% antimony) from 197.6m; 1.5m at 22.6g/t gold equivalent (14.9g/t gold and 4.9% antimony) from 199.3m; 0.7m at 105.7g/t gold equivalent (84g/t gold and 13.8% antimony) from 202m; and 0.5m at 82.6g/t gold equivalent (42.9g/t gold and 25.1% antimony) from 203.4m.

Other higher grade zones in another hole were 0.8m at 21.3g/t gold equivalent (0.3g/t gold and 13.3% antimony) from 98.5m; 0.6m at 12.2g/t gold equivalent (0.1g/t gold and 7.7% antimony) from 101.7m; 0.3m at 28.1g/t gold equivalent (3.6g/t gold and 15.5% antimony) from 142.4m; 0.3m at 17.7g/t gold equivalent (11.4g/t gold and 4.0% antimony) from 148m; 1.5m at 25.8g/t gold equivalent (19.9g/t gold and 3.7% antimony) from 149.6m; and 0.4m at 20.6g/t gold equivalent (19.6g/t gold and 0.7% antimony) from 195.8m.

Exceeding expectations

Southern Cross managing director Michael Hudson said drilling at Sunday Creek continued to exceed the company’s expectations.

“These holes are the second and fourth best to be drilled into Sunday Creek based on cumulative grade by metres,” he said.

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

With 13,500m drilled in less than two years and 15 holes intersecting a cumulative grade of more than 100g/t by metres, Mr Hudson believes Sunday Creek has potential to be a significant exploration discovery in Victoria with.

He said a 10kmmineralised trend that extends beyond the drill area and is defined by historic workings and soil sampling is yet to receive any exploration drilling and offers potential future upside.

Project location

The Sunday Creek epizonal-style gold project is located 60km north of Melbourne across 193 square kilometres of tenements within the Melbourne Structural Zone of the Lachlan Fold Belt.

Southern Cross is also the freehold landholder of 1.32sq km which forms the key portion in and around the project’s drilled area.

The regional host to the Sunday Creek mineralisation is an interbedded turbidite sequence of siltstones, which are minor sandstones metamorphosed to sub-greenschist facies and folded into a set of open northwest-trending folds.

Mineralisation is controlled by veining, stibnite-gold-matrix breccias and brittle faults.

The immediate host is a zone of intensely-altered white mica-pyritic siltstones and white mica-pyrite-carbonate altered dyke rocks.