Duke Exploration’s first diamond drill hole at the Prairie Creek project in Central Queensland has intersected six zones of epithermal gold mineralisation from the surface to 150m deep.

The intersections include 2.3m at 4.68 g/t gold (from 7m), 20.40m at 1.86 g/t gold (from 11.40m) and 5.35 m at 2.95 g/t gold from (38.10m).

Assays results from two holes are still pending after the drill program, which targeted a 1.6km long 200m wide north-east trending gold soil anomaly.

“The Prairie Creek project drilling program strategy is to confirm previous exploration results and to gain a critical understanding of the geology, so we can begin to evaluate the project potential for an economic mining operation,” Duke managing director Philip Condon said.

“We planned and drilled three diamond holes to achieve that goal and the assays from the first hole are the first positive glimpse of the outcomes of that program.

“The first hole has provided encouraging geological information that the depth potential at Prairie Creek may be significant and untested.”

The Prairie Creek project is located 120km south-west of Gladstone and 25km south-west of Biloela in an area of Central Queensland prospective for epithermal gold mineralisation like the Cracow deposit.

Duke is an Australian exploration company with majority interests in five granted exploration tenements for copper, gold and silver exploration areas located in Queensland and New South Wales.

Its key assets comprise the Bundarra copper exploration project and Prairie Creek gold exploration project in Central Queensland and the Red Hill copper exploration project (New South Wales).

Mr Condon said the diamond rill rig had moved from Prairie Creek to Mount Flora to complete two diamond drill holes to provide metallurgical samples for a definitive metallurgical test work program.

“The rig will then start the next phase of exploration drilling to test the new targets developed from our profile targeting techniques, which will lead to the prioritisation of the next resource development opportunity at the Bundarra project.”

The Bundarra project Mount Flora prospect is the company’s most advanced target, with resource development potential for copper, silver and gold.

Duke recently announced an inferred resource of 16Mt at an average grade of 0.5 per cent copper and 6.9 ppm silver at Mount Flora, equating to 78,000 tonnes of copper and 3.6 million ounces of silver.