An emerging gold province is developing in the Duketon greenstone belt in Western Australia. Recent drilling by South Boulder Mines (ASX:STB) at its Terminator deposit has added to the potential gold bounty.
Located 120 kilometres north of Laverton in Western Australia, the Duketon gold region was previously owned by Normandy Mining and Newmont Mining Corporation. Despite some reconaissance, the majority of the project remains under-explored.
Over 2.5 million ounces of gold is undeveloped in-ground at Duketon to date.
Now first pass aircore drilling by South Boulder at its freshly discovered Terminator Gold Prospect has found significant widespread gold mineralisation.
Best results from Terminator include: 44m @ 1.46g/t from surface; including 36m @ 1.72g/t from surface and 4m @ 9.1g/t from 32m; 16m @ 1.16g/t from surface; including 8m @ 2.21g/t from 4m and 16m @ 0.73g/t from 36m; including 4m @ 2.53g/t from 44m.
The drill program was originally designed to test for shallow nickel sulphide within The Bulge area. In an interesting twist, South Boulder holds 100% of the gold and base metal rights at Duketon, but Independence Group can earn a 70% interest in the nickel found.
The company has requested a trading halt until the nickel sulphide results are compiled and available for release to the market.
Investors can look forward to further gold and nickel results, as half of the drill program results are yet to be received by the company.
And just 30 km's from the Terminator prospect, Regis Resources (ASX: RRL) is establishing a gold processing plant for its 1.5 million ounce Moolart Well Gold Project in the Duketon area.
This puts gold discoveries made by South Boulder in the Duketon project in an altogether different and more advantageous light, as potential feedstock for the Moolart gold processing plant.
Lorry Hughes managing director of South Boulder said the presence of strong widespread gold grades at shallow depths is highly encouraging.
Hughes said the results at Terminator generally occur where there is very little transported cover.
He said "the depth of cover over a lot of the drilling areas is about 2m so this indicates that the grades intersected in drilling should be fairly representative of a typical depleted gold deposit”.
Further aircore drilling is planned to test for extensions to the recently discovered gold mineralisation which is open in most directions.
Gold exploration drilling will be accelerated at the Terminator Prospects subject to sourcing a suitable drilling rig.