Great Boulder Resources extends Blue Poles strike to more than 1-kilometre with unexpected base metal discovery

Great Boulder Resources Ltd’s (ASX:GBR) results from the second phase of aircore drilling at Blue Poles discovery within the Whiteheads project north of Kalgoorlie, has extended the total strike length to more than of 1-kilometre.  Blue Poles has now been closed off to the north but remains open to the south while the drilling has also revealed a new VMS-style lead-zinc discovery to the west of Blue Poles. This phase of drilling was designed to define the limits of mineralisation at Blue Poles prior to reverse circulation (RC) drilling, which is scheduled to be completed this month. 'True greenfields discovery' Great Boulder managing director Andrew Paterson said: “These new results add further weight to the Blue Poles discovery. “We are very keen to get some deeper drilling into it with the RC rig shortly. “The base metal discovery out to the west is completely unexpected, so we’ll also be working on that to see how significant it might be. “There is no geophysics or historic drilling in the area, so it’s a true greenfields discovery. “At this stage, we are still receiving assays from the programs completed at Side Well in September. “We’ll have further updates on the Side Well aircore and auger programs in the coming weeks." A single fence of aircore holes drilled across a smaller geochemical target to the northwest also intersected anomalous mineralisation, which will require additional testing in future programs. Completely new discovery In other results, a fence of holes drilled to the west to provide additional geological information intersected lead-zinc sulphide minerals at the bottom of a hole 500 metres west of Blue Poles. Assays include: ➢ 1-metre at 13 g/t silver, 1.04% lead and 1.01% zinc from 92 metres; and ➢ 2 metres at 7.35 g/t silver, 0.63% lead and 0.80% zinc from 97 metres to EOH. This is a completely new discovery in an area with no surface geochemical signature. The company will plan further work to assess the nature and scale of base metal mineralisation. Blue Poles aircore program The second round of drilling at Blue Poles consisted of 51 holes for 2,476 metres and these were mainly drilled along strike to the north and south of previous coverage. Holes were also drilled to test discrete gold-in-soil anomalies nearby, plus one fence of drilling which extended about 600 metres west to gain additional information about the local stratigraphy. Sponsorship with Portable ppb The company has also entered into a sponsorship agreement with Portable ppb Pty Ltd, which will allow it to access PPPB’s detectORE™ technology in field exploration programs. detectORE™, invented by Dr Mel Lintern at CSIRO, is a patented technology which enables handheld pXRF guns to detect gold values to less than 10 parts per billion (ppb) in near real-time field samples. This represents a massive potential gain in terms of time and expense, by speeding up the assay time from many weeks in a commercial laboratory to an overnight process in the field. Using detectORE™ will enable GBR to quickly vector in on anomalous prospects, defining areas of interest with multiple rounds of soil geochemistry within a matter of days instead of months. There is also potential for the technology to be used on composited and individual drill samples to reduce the volume and time involved with sending samples to Perth for gold and costly multi-element analysis. This will enable geologists to receive quick feedback while drill rigs are on site and therefore make timely informed decisions on where to drill next. detectORE™ is in the advanced research and development stage and not yet available for general commercial use. Step change in early-stage exploration By partnering with PPPB as a sponsor, GBR will be able to participate in field trials and ongoing development of the technology, gaining pre-competitive access and resultant savings. Paterson said: “This sponsorship is very much in line with GBR’s philosophy of using new technologies to explore more efficiently wherever possible.” “This will be a step-change in our early-stage exploration, particularly in areas like Side Well where we have big areas of unexplored terrain to cover”.