Great Western Minerals Group Ltd (C:GWG)
Shares Issued 155,973,116
Last Close 10/8/2009 $0.37
Friday October 09 2009 - News Release

Mr. Jim Engdahl reports

GREAT WESTERN MINERALS GROUP VERIFIES HEAVY RARE EARTH GRADES AT DOUGLAS RIVER

Great Western Minerals Group Ltd. has released the results of a recent trench sampling program at its 100-per-cent-owned Douglas River project in northern Saskatchewan.

The work program focused on locating the original trenches on the property excavated by Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation ("SMDC") in 1984, following up on mineralization discovered by Marline Oil Corporation ("Marline") between 1977 and 1982. Marline results obtained from semi-quantitative analysis yielded values of up to 10% total rare earth oxide ("TREO") with dysprosium oxide ("Dy2O3") values over 3%. SMDC followed up Marline's efforts with trenching and sampling that yielded assays as high as 7.82% TREO with a Dy2O3 value of 0.89%.

In August 2009, a Company exploration crew located the main SMDC trench and took a combination of chip and panel samples with the initial goal of confirming the historic assay values. The trench is approximately 17m long and 5m wide in medium-grained hematitic sandstone. Areas for chip and panel sampling were selected based on scintillometer readings for total radioactivity with sampling focused on areas with higher-than-background readings.

Samples were processed at the Saskatchewan Research Council ("SRC") laboratory in Saskatoon, SK, an ISO accredited institution. Standards and duplicate samples were employed and analyzed by lithium metaborate/tetraborate fusion and nitric acid digestion followed by ICP-MS analysis. The program was successful in confirming the historic assays of mineralization in the trench, with values as high as 8.75% TREO including Dy2O3 assayed at 1.15%.

                               ASSAY RESULTS

                 Sample                          incl. 
Sample No.         type      LREO%  HREO%(1)    Dy2O3%  TREO%(2)  HREO/TREO

202608             Chip      0.02      3.59      0.44      3.61        99.4%
202609             Chip      0.01      6.31      0.82      6.32        99.8%
202610             Chip      0.01      8.74      1.15      8.75        99.9%
202611             Chip      0.02      5.84      0.74      5.86        99.7%
202612             Chip      0.01      1.15      0.14      1.16        99.1%
202613             Chip      0.01      4.24      0.54      4.25        99.8%
202614             Chip      0.01      1.41      0.17      1.42        99.3%
202615             Chip      0.01      3.02      0.39      3.03        99.7%
202616             Chip      0.01      3.46      0.45      3.47        99.7%
202617             Chip      0.01      5.07      0.64      5.08        99.8%
202618             Chip      0.01      3.55      0.46      3.56        99.7%
202619             Chip      0.01      4.45      0.57      4.46        99.8%
202922          Panel(3)     0.01      0.07      0.01      0.08        87.5%
202923            Panel      0.01      1.90      0.23      1.91        99.5%
202924            Panel      0.01      0.07      0.01      0.08        87.5%
202925            Panel      0.01      0.02      0.01      0.03        66.7%

1. HREO represents total heavy rare earth oxides, comprising yttrium plus 
europium to lutetium as oxides. 
2. TREO represents total rare earth oxides, comprising HREO plus lanthanum
to samarium as oxides. 
3. The panel sampling covered approximately four square metres of the west
wall of the main trench and included mineralized and non-mineralized rock.

The heavy rare earth elements are critical to applications like permanent magnets, flat panel displays, lasers and energy efficient lighting. In particular, dysprosium is required to give a neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnet the ability to perform under high temperatures such as those experienced under the hood of a hybrid vehicle where the permanent magnet electric motor resides.

"With a 99% heavy rare earth distribution, Douglas River seems to be a unique heavy rare earth occurrence that could prove to be very important to the rare earth industry," says Jim Engdahl, President and CEO of Great Western Minerals Group. Engdahl adds, "Most of the deposits currently being mined or developed do not have a significant distribution of heavy rare earths and as a result it is expected that these elements will be in short supply in the near future. An occurrence like Douglas River certainly brings balance to our portfolio of rare earth projects and may well prove to be the answer to expected global shortages of the heavy rare earths."

John Pearson, MSc, PGeo, Vice-President Exploration for GWMG, is the qualified person responsible for reviewing the contents of this news release