Great Boulder Resources has reported “exceptional” gold grades at the Mulga Bill prospect within its flagship Side Well project in Western Australia ahead of a planned resource update.

The program was designed to test poorly-defined areas around the edges of the Mulga Bill high-grade vein positions as part of a process to upgrade less-drilled parts of the resource from the inferred to the indicated category.

In-fill and extensional reverse circulation drilling of nine holes for a total of 1,587 metres hit intersections of up to 194.5 grams per tonne, extending the resource and adding thickness and grade to existing lodes.

Exceeded estimations

Managing director Andrew Paterson said the new intersections were “sensational.”

“These holes were designed to add definition within areas of inferred resource and they have done so in emphatic style, with intersections that are thicker than we estimated,” he said.

“The drilling has added high-grade intersections up-dip from previous holes on several sections within the resource, which should add gold ounces closer to the surface than the current estimate.”

“This will be important for potential mine economics when we start scoping studies.”

Strong returns

Best assays from the program were 5m at 43.13g/t gold from 185m including 2m at 102.8g/t from 186m, 5m at 40.61g/t gold from 256m including 1m at 194.50g/t from 258m and 6m at 20.52g/t gold from 179m including 2m at 57.10g/t from 179m.

The footprint at Mulga Bill now stretches over 2.3km for a current resource of 568,000 ounces of gold at 2.7g/t.

Mr Paterson said the mineralised wireframes at Mulga Bill would be updated and extended to incorporate the new intersections in preparation for a resource update before the year’s end.

New tenements

Great Boulder acquired eight new high-priority tenements at Side Well this week, including 7km of strike south of Mulga Bill and an additional 3.8km south of the Ironbark Trend.

The company now controls more than 35km of contiguous tenure over the eastern half of the Meekatharra greenstone belt.

“As soon as we saw the potential, we were keen to lock down additional tenure along strike from those anomalies,” Mr Paterson said.

“We believe there is excellent potential to continue making new discoveries as we grow towards our million-ounce gold target.”