Gold Fields, Great Southern reload for big Queensland gold hunt
Brought to you by Bulls and Bears
Doug Bright
Mining giant Gold Fields Limited is set to restart drilling rigs at Great Southern Mining’s vast Edinburgh Park project in north Queensland as drilling sets restart following the wet season in north Queensland.
In particular, short-term excitement is building around the prospect of Mt Dillon, where IP geophysical surveys have outlined a large, highly charged anomaly located several hundred meters below the surface.
Prior to the inclusion of Gold Fields in the project, Great Southern had identified more than 25 high priority targets across the vast 1,560 square kilometer land package.
However, Mt Dillon was far superior to other possibilities as the company believed the anomaly could be linked to sulphides in a preserved intrusive system.
‘Given the scale of the project and the number of targets identified, exploration on this large project is still in its early stages.’
Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane
And now, the big day when we will put the theory to the test is just around the corner.
Mt Dillon is a topographic hill containing a silicified lithocap (a resilient cap that protects the summit from erosion) and a geological cap of exactly the type described above major gold-copper systems elsewhere in the world, combined with extensive alteration.
Drilling will begin after the north Queensland wet season, probably in March or April, and initial plans are to drill at least two deep diamond holes through the center and bottom of the IP anomaly.
When Gold Fields came on board with the project two years ago, Great Southern agreed to allow the major to gain a 75 per cent stake in its land in return for spending up to A$15 million over six years. It has already spent the $2 million minimum hurdle so far.
The partnership was formed specifically to pursue large-scale epithermal and intrusion-related gold systems (IRGS); This system is the kind that can quickly grow from a short-lived, easily overlooked indicator on the map to a massive gold operation.
Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane said: “2026 is shaping up to be another exciting year for the Edinburgh Park Joint Venture. We are extremely encouraged by the evidence of large-scale epithermal systems present in at least two of the target areas drilled to date. Multiple targets at Edinburgh Park exhibit the characteristics required for large-scale gold systems, including deep-seated structures with widespread hydrothermal exchange from surface and overlapping geochemical anomalies.”
The massive project is in the hands of elite geological companies working shoulder to shoulder with heavyweights such as the 4 million ounce Ravenswood operation, the legendary multi-million ounce Mt Leyshon deposit and Evolution Mining’s former Mt Carlton gold mine just down the road.
This latest planned diamond drilling campaign marks a second crack in Edinburgh by the partners following last year’s field season, where six diamond holes totaling 2955.6 meters were drilled across three key targets (Leichhardt Creek, Molongle and Megan Veins).
Although initial analyzes from Leichhardt Creek did not yield economic results, the thick zones of quartz-sulphide veins and captured strong hydrothermal alteration are arguably equally important at this early stage.
Such features point to classic plumbing for a large mineralized system and are a solid clue that geologists are zeroing in on a material target, potentially an intrusion-related gold system (IRGS).
These are large-scale gold deposits genetically linked to felsic magmatic intrusions that typically exhibit specific metal fingerprints including bismuth, tellurium, arsenic, molybdenum, and tungsten. Edinburgh Park is promising for high and low epithermal gold-silver systems as well as porphyry-related gold-copper systems.
Three holes at Leichardt successfully captured a variety of supporting mineralization indicators, including quartz-pyrite veining, intense hydrothermal alteration, molybdenum, and high traces of silver and base metals.
These signatures strongly support what the company sees as encouraging modeling for other proposed targets north of the project area.
Importantly, analysis is still pending on the company’s three remaining drilling holes at the Molongle and Megan Veins targets.
Molongle currently has surface rock chip results grading up to 5.27 g/t gold and is located within highly altered volcanic rocks typical of epithermal systems; In the shallow drilling carried out in 1989, a 24-meter drilling with 9.36 g/t gold was obtained from the surface and an 18-meter drilling with 0.34 g/t gold was obtained from 12 meters.
Megan Veins also uncovered historic rock fragments containing up to 10.55 g/t gold, showing classic gold-silver-base-metal veins and strong signature changes; this suggests a nearby gold-silver end-stage epithermal system or a slightly more distant porphyry system.
If analyzes from Molongle or Megan Veins yield positive results in the laboratory, the market may begin to show more interest.
Edinburgh Park, where more geophysics and geochemistry are ongoing to establish new targets in the wider project, says management is still in its infancy.
When a project shows the kind of geological signals that point to multi-million ounce potential, as Edinburgh Park is starting to do, patience becomes part of the investment thesis.
The market often demands that holes be discovered instantly and re-rated overnight, but the truth is that these giant systems often reveal themselves gradually; through multiple drilling campaigns, multiple meters deep into the ground and an increasingly better understanding of the geology of each hole.
However, with the Gold Fields funding the heavy lifting and several large-scale mineral systems already emerging, the Great Southern has the luxury of time to do the exploration properly; This is exactly what is needed to give the thorough job a true statewide hunt deserves.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
