Great Boulder Resources (ASX:GBR) is following up a series of new gold targets across the central and eastern corridors at the Side Well Gold Project near Meekatharra in Western Australia.
Aircore drilling will target the north-south trend between the corridors defined by a line of chargeable anomalies that exists with an unexplained gravity anomaly, and to the north of the Ironbark deposit.
The latter hosts a line of chargeable anomalies located within the same mafic-ultramafic stratigraphy as Ironbark and the eastern corridor.
The company also intends to conduct diamond drilling at the Mulga Bill and Eaglehawk deposits with a third rig scheduled for Q4 2025, exploring the continuity of stacked veins to quantify the potential of the gold system.
Great Boulder will confirm the timeline of this program following planning and rig scheduling.
In the meanwhile, Great Boulder is moving its reverse circulation drilling program from Side Well South and back to Ironbark, which is focused on resource definition.
The company intends to conduct 1,600m of infill drilling at the recently discovered southern zone, which previously returned a strike spanning 180m to the south with a resource of 100,000 ounces @ 3.3 grams per tonne gold.
After the completion of drilling at Ironbark, Great Boulder will relocate the rig to the Eaglehawk deposit to follow up ‘high-grade’ zones, which includes 8m @ 29.18g/t gold from 128m, as well as the hole ending with a 4m composite sample assay of 14.85g/t gold, remaining open at depth.
The return of results will indicate further reverse circulation drilling.
Managing Director Andrew Paterson says the company is focused on accelerating drilling to streamline discovery and resource definition ahead of its next growth phase of Side Well.
“Our Side Well Gold Project is one of the hottest gold addresses in Australia, situated next to Meekatharra and next door to Westgold’s (ASX:WGX) Paddy’s Flat Project,” Paterson says.
“We’ll have at least five deposits in the next resource: Mulga Bill, Eaglehawk, Ironbark, Saltbush, and Side Well South. Looking beyond that, the new gold targets are the focus of exploration for the next discovery step-change beyond our current million-ounce exploration target.
“In addition to what is already an extremely busy field program we’ll be drilling diamond holes under the Mulga Bill – Eaglehawk gold system later in the year, as well as a smaller program at Ironbark for geotechnical information and metallurgical samples.”
The Side Well Gold Project currently hosts a mineral resource of 668,000 ounces @ 2.8g/t gold.
Great Boulder Resources holds a 75% stake in the project, and has completed more than 197,000m of aircore, reverse circulation, and diamond drilling at the project since first acquired in July 2020.
Since first acquiring its 75% interest in the Side Well project in July 2020, more than 197,000m of aircore (54%), reverse circulation (43%), and diamond (3%) holes has been completed to 30 June 2025.
The current mineral resource of 668,000 ounces @ 2.8g/t was announced at the end of 2023, at which point 126,000m had been completed. Since that time Great Boulder has drilled more than 70,000m, much of which will directly contribute to the global resource update for the five deposits currently in progress.
In the past two years the company has defined a mineralised hydrothermal system – the Eastern Corridor – spanning at least 22km of strike. This corridor is the stratigraphic equivalent of the more than 3 million ounce Paddy’s Flat mining area, which has been the source of three gold discoveries by the exploration team with several more highly prospective geochemical and geophysical targets remaining to be tested.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: Great Boulder Resources
