Charters Towers-based company Eagle Drilling NQ has won the contract for an exploration campaign across three North Queensland gold projects.

Great Northern Minerals announced today it had appointed Eagle Drilling NQ to begin testing at the Camel Creek project, followed by the Golden Cup and Big Rush projects.

The program consists of about 3400m of reverse circulation drilling across the three projects.

Great Northern Minerals said Eagle Drilling NQ had successfully completed the last two drilling programs for the company and was regarded as the most experienced and reliable drilling contractor in North Queensland.

The company said the purpose of the latest campaign was to follow up shallow historic drilling which returned a number of high-grade intersections and to examine at depth the potential to define large resources at Camel Creek and Big Rush.

Gold systems, based on a large number of shallow open pits, extend over several kilometres of strike at the site.

Camel Creek was last mined in 1988 and produced over 57,000 ounces of gold from a heap leach operation.

At Big Rush, the drilling program will incorporate testing of the heap leach pad containing about one million tonnes of material and enable the collection of metallurgical samples for subsequent testing of previously mined material.

The drilling program is expected to start in the last week of July.