|
Brandaktuelles von Minesite, heute Nacht gibts wohl News zu Treasure Island: http://www.minesite.com/minews/singlenews/article/focus-minerals-reveals-a-high-grade-gold-exploration-target-in-western-australia-that-looks-uncannil/41.html
Focus Reveals A High Grade Gold Exploration Target In Western Australia That Looks Uncannily Reminiscent Of WMC's Old St Ives Mines
By Our Man in Oz
Some investors thought Focus Minerals was tempting fate by naming an exploration project in the middle of an Australian salt lake “Treasure Island”. But by the time trading starts on the Australian Securities Exchange tomorrow morning the critics will be eating their words because the chatter reaching Minesite’s Man in Oz is that the project is living up to its name. Details are fuzzy, but the talk in Australia’s gold capital, Kalgoorlie, is that Focus has made what could be a significant discovery on the one kilometre long island in Lake Cowan. Focus chief executive, Campbell Baird, chose his words carefully when Minesite called earlier today, but there was no mistaking the import of his opening words: “Now that the market has closed I guess can tell you a little of what’s happening”.
The “little” involves news about fresh geological samples collected on and around the island, and recently assayed. Assay results from those samples will come out early tomorrow before the ASX opens, meaning that London readers of Minesite are getting an early look at what’s to come, even though they will have the frustration of waiting for the formal filing and re-start of trading. “What we will be able to report is essentially an update of work at Treasure Island”, Campbell said. “We’ve gone back and re-sampled in particular areas, to come up with two zones of interest, one on the east of the island leading into the lake, about 200 metres in strike, and one on the southern edge of the island. The assays from the samples are highly encouraging, running at between 30 and 50 grams of gold a tonne.”
Surface samples, as any geologist will be quick to tell you, are not the same as drilling, and Campbell knows that too, which is why a drill rig has been booked for a maiden campaign on Treasure Island due to start around late January. But, what his geology team is seeing on the island is extremely encouraging. And the way the discovery was made is a terrific story of old-fashioned exploration undertaken by walking the prospect, mapping, sampling and learning how the structures under the island work. A whiff of what’s to come tomorrow can be gleaned from an initial report filed at the ASX three weeks ago, which was quickly dismissed by the market because most interest in Focus up to now has been on its efforts to re-develop the historic Coolgardie goldfield.
But it was in that November 1st report that Focus provided investors with an insight into what the shape of the company’s long-term future might be. As Coolgardie slowly takes shape, the odds are that there will now be a grass-roots, high-grade discovery coming along behind. That’s certainly what Treasure Island looks like, at the moment, with rock chip samples assaying as high as 55.3 grammes per tonne, with quartz veining running for 300 metres, and spanning a distance of 20 metres.
Drilling will be the ultimate arbiter, but before the deeper assays become available next year there are two aspects to the work which investors should note. Firstly, Lake Cowan is one of a series of giant salt lakes which lie south of Kalgoorlie and Kambalda. For decades, the salt pan top masked the gold beneath, and it took very clever geological work by the old Western Mining to unlock the hidden wealth. That thinking lead eventually to the St. Ives mines, and to the sale of the WMC gold assets to South Africa’s Gold Fields group. It takes a degree of imagination, and perhaps at this stage a leap of faith, but the gold under Lake Cowan appears to be directly linked to a massive geological structure called the Boulder Lefroy Fault, and Treasure Island is just 35 kilometres to the south of St Ives.
But why is Focus able to pick up surface gold samples when that part of the region would have been tromped over by generations of prospectors? The answer to that question lies in the fineness of the gold. “What’s important is to go back and look at that November 1 statement, and while we didn’t emphasise the point, it is very, very, fine gold”, Campbell said. So, on Campbell’s bidding, Minesite’s Man did go back. In fact, what that statement said was: “the thickest of the veins contains visible gold as pinheads and fine disseminations associated with oxidised sulphides along the entire 300 metre strike length”.
Campbell said the Treasure Island story is “humorous, if not a little frustrating for a chief executive”. It started when a team led by the principal geologist at Focus, Dean Goodwin, carried out a detailed geochemical sampling program and detected nothing of interest. “You can imagine how disappointed they were”, Campbell said. “That meant a return to first principles, and Dean spent the next two months walking the island on a 10 metre by 10 metre grid, mapping it. It was old style, feet on the ground, mapping, and gathering samples. He wasn’t looking for gold, he mapped it and picked up a sample.” So far so good. But then the pace began to pick up.
“That led to the assays of three weeks ago”, continued Campbell, “and a realisation that those high grades of three weeks ago should have pointed to free, visible, gold. He couldn’t see any. It wasn’t until he broke some of the rocks, poured water on the fresh surface, used his hand lens, and then he could see the gold. When you see those samples, it is as if someone has, in very fine manner, air-sprayed the gold onto the rock.”
Focus followers will learn a lot more about Treasure Island tomorrow, with the report expected to include the first maps showing the location of the sampling and the location of the quartz veining. But, even those details should be seen as just the start of the unravelling of the secrets of this rocky outcrop in a sea of salt. Drilling is what must occur, with Campbell and his crew planning the best way to test what lies at depth, without losing the time, or incurring the expense that slowed WMC in the 1980s when it had to build an elaborate series of causeways and drill pads on its prospects on Lake Lefroy.
Until then, the best way to see Focus is as a profitable miner with its foot firmly stamped on the Coolgardie goldfield, and a plan to graduate into the league of 100,000 ounce a year gold producers from 2011. But moving into the spotlight is the company’s first grass roots discovery, under Treasure Island. It has the potential to be the game changer that the company needs to kick start its share price.
|
Thread abonnieren
