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Penny Taylor
Great Southern Mining has hit paydirt with maiden reverse circulation (RC) drilling at its Amy Clarke prospect within the Duketon gold project near Laverton in Western Australia, intersecting high-grade gold along a previously defined 4.7-kilometre mineralised corridor. The company says the results reinforce the prospect’s potential, sitting just 12km from Regis Resources’ Garden Well processing facility.
The 18-hole, 2248-metre campaign tested higher-grade zones identified by earlier aircore drilling. It appears to have done its job, returning a clutch of impressive near-surface intercepts along strike and at depth, extending mineralisation down-dip by up to 50m and broadening areas of higher-grade gold.
The headline result came from a hole that delivered 5m grading 6.71 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 51m, including a richer three-metre core going 10.4g/t gold.
Other notable hits likely to make management smile included 2m at 8.92g/t within a broader 11-metre interval grading 1.86g/t gold from 45m. A third returned multiple mineralised zones, the best of which was 8m at 1.44g/t from 67m, featuring 2m at 4.7g/t gold.
‘Amy Clarke is an emerging discovery with immense upside. The gold starts from surface and continues to the extent of the drilling in the fresh rock.’
Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane
Further results show the system’s breadth, with intercepts of 5m at 1.81g/t gold from 61m, 2m at 1.41g/t from a very shallow 7m and multiple one-metre slices grading more than 2g/t gold. Reported intervals are downhole lengths, with true widths not yet confirmed.
The company says while drilling remains shallow, averaging less than 100m below surface, with mineralisation observed from surface in the oxidised, or weathered, horizon and extending at depth into fresh rock.
Geologically, the gold at Amy Clarke is associated with quartz veining and disseminated or coarse pyrite. According to Great Southern, the prospect lies in a high-strain structural corridor, generally near contacts between different rock types, with the structures currently modelled as steeply east-dipping, a classic setting for gold deposition in the Eastern Goldfields.
Great Southern managing director Matthew Keane said: “The Company’s aggressive 2026 RC drilling campaign has delivered strong results across three key targets, incorporating Amy Clarke, the Golden Boulder discovery and Mon Ami, with all three returning high-grade intercepts and material extensions to known mineralisation.”
With a successful maiden RC campaign in the bag, detailed geological and structural mapping is underway, alongside multi-element geochemistry of selected intervals, to better understand the controls on mineralisation and home in on the highest-grade zones.
Great Southern says it has already started planning for the next phase, likely to include follow-up RC drilling and potential diamond drilling. Initial drilling is expected to focus on open lodes in the northern part of Amy Clarke and the central section of the 4.7-kilometre trend. The system remains open to the south, where little drilling has been undertaken beyond the company’s southernmost holes, leaving a substantial stretch of prospective ground largely untested.
The latest results add another string to Great Southern’s bow at Duketon, complementing its nearby Golden Boulder discovery, where historic production averaged an eye-watering grade of 28.6g/t gold and the company has since outlined mineralisation along 3.5km of strike. The junior explorer is awaiting assays from another 6000m of ongoing drilling at the southern end of Golden Boulder and the Golden Boulder East trend, 3km southwest of Amy Clarke.
Amy Clarke is interpreted to lie along the same structural trend that hosts Regis’ Erlistoun open pit mine, about 3km to the north, which contains a 320,000-ounce resource grading 1.9g/t gold. The Garden Well processing facility, with a capacity of five million tonnes per annum, is 12km to the northeast.
The broader Duketon Greenstone Belt is no stranger to big gold discoveries, with mining heavyweight Regis Resources identifying more than eight million ounces of gold resources across the region. Great Southern’s tenure includes significant sections of the major shear zones that are known to host the majority of the deposits across the belt.
In a gold-rich neighbourhood where proximity to processing infrastructure can be worth its weight in gold, Great Southern is assembling an increasingly enticing collection of prospects on the doorstep of established mining operations. With Amy Clarke shaping up as another potential discovery and a swag of fresh assays from Golden Boulder still to come, the company’s Duketon gold story looks to have plenty more chapters left to write.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au