Great Boulder Resources (ASX:GBR) has resumed air core (AC) drilling at its Side Well Gold Project near Meekatharra in Western Australia.
The roughly 4,000m program will test targets along strike and to the south of the Ironbark prospect, as well as in the Mulga Bill North area.
It follows a number of other diamond and reverse circulation (RC) drilling programs completed at Side Well earlier this year, the most recent of which identified gold mineralisation at the Cervelo prospect on the east side of Mulga Bill.
Significant intersections from that RC program included 4m at 5.53 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 18m and 6m at 4.64g/t gold from 148m.
“The Great Boulder field team is back in action testing two priority target areas. Drilling south of Ironbark will test mineralisation along strike as well as some untested geochemical anomalies,” Managing Director Andrew Paterson says.
“At Mulga Bill North we have a series of holes testing the 700m mineralised zone outlined by previous drilling”
“At Mulga Bill North we have a series of holes testing the 700m mineralised zone outlined by previous drilling.”
With drilling underway, Great Boulder is waiting on the results of a high-resolution sub-audio magnetics (SAM) survey that was conducted at the end of June over a 2km area of the Ironbark deposit.
The company hopes these images of the magnetic and electrical properties of the deposit will provide an improved understanding of the mineralisation at Ironbark, which will in turn facilitate target generation for further drilling.
In the meantime, Great Boulder is pursuing heritage clearances for approximately 14km of strike along the Ironbark corridor, which will clear the way for larger-scale AC and RC drilling. This area consists of several priority targets that represent the bulk of the company’s prospect pipeline for the next 12 months.
In particular, the company is aiming to make several new Ironbark-style discoveries of high-grade, near-surface gold mineralisation.
“Great Boulder is well positioned for an extremely busy second half of 2023 as we look to start testing a range of exciting targets within the 14km-long Ironbark hydrothermal gold system,” Paterson adds.
“This will underpin the company’s drilling programs as we work to define Side Well’s million-ounce potential.”
In addition to the Side Well Project — for which a maiden 518,000-ounce resource was announced in January — Great Boulder owns the Wellington and Whiteheads projects, located east of Wiluna and north of Kalgoorlie, respectively.
Write to Oliver Gray at Mining.com.au
Images: Great Boulder Resources Ltd
