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Penny Taylor
Nice Southern Mining has hit paydirt with maiden reverse circulation (RC) drilling at its Amy Clarke prospect throughout the Duketon gold venture close to Laverton in Western Australia, intersecting high-grade gold alongside a beforehand outlined 4.7-kilometre mineralised hall. The corporate says the outcomes reinforce the prospect’s potential, sitting simply 12km from Regis Sources’ Backyard Effectively processing facility.
The 18-hole, 2248-metre marketing campaign examined higher-grade zones recognized by earlier aircore drilling. It seems to have finished its job, returning a clutch of spectacular near-surface intercepts alongside strike and at depth, extending mineralisation down-dip by as much as 50m and broadening areas of higher-grade gold.
The headline outcome got here from a gap that delivered 5m grading 6.71 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 51m, together with a richer three-metre core going 10.4g/t gold.
Different notable hits more likely to make administration smile included 2m at 8.92g/t inside a broader 11-metre interval grading 1.86g/t gold from 45m. A 3rd returned a number of mineralised zones, the perfect of which was 8m at 1.44g/t from 67m, that includes 2m at 4.7g/t gold.
‘Amy Clarke is an rising discovery with immense upside. The gold begins from floor and continues to the extent of the drilling within the recent rock.’
Nice Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane
Additional outcomes present the system’s breadth, with intercepts of 5m at 1.81g/t gold from 61m, 2m at 1.41g/t from a really shallow 7m and a number of one-metre slices grading greater than 2g/t gold. Reported intervals are downhole lengths, with true widths not but confirmed.
The corporate says whereas drilling stays shallow, averaging lower than 100m under floor, with mineralisation noticed from floor within the oxidised, or weathered, horizon and lengthening at depth into recent rock.
Geologically, the gold at Amy Clarke is related to quartz veining and disseminated or coarse pyrite. In response to Nice Southern, the prospect lies in a high-strain structural hall, usually close to contacts between totally different rock varieties, with the buildings presently modelled as steeply east-dipping, a basic setting for gold deposition within the Jap Goldfields.
Nice Southern managing director Matthew Keane mentioned: “The Firm’s aggressive 2026 RC drilling marketing campaign has delivered robust outcomes throughout three key targets, incorporating Amy Clarke, the Golden Boulder discovery and Mon Ami, with all three returning high-grade intercepts and materials extensions to identified mineralisation.”
With a profitable maiden RC marketing campaign within the bag, detailed geological and structural mapping is underway, alongside multi-element geochemistry of chosen intervals, to higher perceive the controls on mineralisation and residential in on the highest-grade zones.
Nice Southern says it has already began planning for the following part, more likely to embrace follow-up RC drilling and potential diamond drilling. Preliminary drilling is anticipated to concentrate on open lodes within the northern a part of Amy Clarke and the central part of the 4.7-kilometre development. The system stays open to the south, the place little drilling has been undertaken past the corporate’s southernmost holes, leaving a considerable stretch of potential floor largely untested.
The most recent outcomes add one other string to Nice Southern’s bow at Duketon, complementing its close by Golden Boulder discovery, the place historic manufacturing averaged an eye-watering grade of 28.6g/t gold and the corporate has since outlined mineralisation alongside 3.5km of strike. The junior explorer is awaiting assays from one other 6000m of ongoing drilling on the southern finish of Golden Boulder and the Golden Boulder East development, 3km southwest of Amy Clarke.
Amy Clarke is interpreted to lie alongside the identical structural development that hosts Regis’ Erlistoun open pit mine, about 3km to the north, which incorporates a 320,000-ounce useful resource grading 1.9g/t gold. The Backyard Effectively processing facility, with a capability of 5 million tonnes every year, is 12km to the northeast.
The broader Duketon Greenstone Belt isn’t any stranger to massive gold discoveries, with mining heavyweight Regis Sources figuring out greater than eight million ounces of gold assets throughout the area. Nice Southern’s tenure contains important sections of the foremost shear zones which are identified to host nearly all of the deposits throughout the belt.
In a gold-rich neighbourhood the place proximity to processing infrastructure will be price its weight in gold, Nice Southern is assembling an more and more attractive assortment of prospects on the doorstep of established mining operations. With Amy Clarke shaping up as one other potential discovery and a swag of recent assays from Golden Boulder nonetheless to come back, the corporate’s Duketon gold story appears to be like to have lots extra chapters left to write down.
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