Great Southern Mining has remained steadfastly confident of finding something big at its Queensland multi-metals exploration play. The challenges of holding a vast swathe of remote, yet very prospective ground have not prevented the company from fast-tracking the exploration road to discovery with a new hyperspectral survey providing an insight into the mineral composition of the underlying rocks. The new survey is an efficient exploration targeting method that has identified five high priority gold targets and ten secondary gold targets at the Edinburgh Park project in north Queensland that look to be very interesting.
Great Southern’s Executive Chairman, John Terpu said: “What makes this really exciting is that many of these targets are more prominent than what was observed originally at Mt Carlton during my Conquest Mining days (now Evolution Mining Limited).”
The hyperspectral survey was completed via a co-funding arrangement and agreement with Evolution Mining. It is an airborne remote imaging technique that uses special sensors to detect minute amounts of radiation based on visible or invisible wavelengths of light that an object or material absorbs or emits. The data can then be filtered by wavelength along the electromagnetic spectrum, which correlate with specific minerals or groups of minerals.
Hyperspectral imaging is used by explorers such as Great Southern who are searching for “epithermal” systems, where gold, silver and copper deposits form in magmatically active and shallow regions of the earth’s crust.
Geologists look for certain characteristics in rock formations to try to understand what kind of box a particular mineral system fits into and they then look at vectors towards where mineralisation should occur in those ore systems.
The Perth based Great Southern has identified several large-scale “hot spots”, where it says advanced “argillic alteration” is characteristic of and directly comparable to, the “high-sulphidation” multi-million ounce Mt Carlton deposit - Great Southern’s well-endowed next-door neighbour.
Argillic mineral alteration is formed when hot, acidic fluid gradually neutralises and cools, causing the formation of clay-type minerals such as pyrophyllite. This mineral is characteristic of a particular “zone” in the epithermal mineral system and should assist Great Southern to vector in on any potential sulphide mineralisation in the core of the system.
Great Southern said the hyperspectral survey has identified the Fish Creek, Mt Edinburgh Castle, Whydah South and Bogie Range prospects.
Great Southern is headed up by Mr Terpu, a Geologist who knows the intricacies of these complex epithermal systems. Terpu has more than 15 years’ experience exploring in Queensland during his tenure as Managing Director of Conquest Mining, which is now Evolution Mining.
He was involved in the discovery of the V2 and Area 39 deposits, now the tier one Mt Carlton Gold mine, which has produced more than 100,000 ounces of gold for the third year in a row.
With over 1000km square to explore now concentrated into about 50 square km’s in elephant country, Great Southern is not only looking for the giant Mt Carlton-type deposits, but will also turn its eye to the potential for intrusion related gold and porphyry copper gold systems.
The company has already conducted a maiden drilling program at its Rocky Ponds prospect that intersected strongly anomalous metal zones peaking at 0.2g/t gold, 49.7g/t silver, 0.44% copper and 0.58% zinc within sulphide-rich epithermal altered mineralisation.
The findings of the hyperspectral survey are still in the initial stages and the company has a lot of targeting to do, although it has uncovered some big alteration footprints from which to launch a meaningful exploration campaign.
The old saying that where there’s smoke there’s fire, may just come to bear at Great Southern’s Queensland play
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