Purdys Reward Is Effectively Worthless.

Irrespective of the amount of gold available at Purdys, the deposit now has no value. To understand why we neeed to go back to near the beginning.

For those who came in late, Novo was able to start "exploration" of the Purdys Reward prospect which it had access to under a joint venture arrangement with ARV, because of the massive financial support arranged by Eric Sprott. Tens of millions of dollars were planted in Novos war chest

Novos Chairman and President Quinton Hennigh had long had an obsession that the giant Witswatersrand deposit was replicated in the Pilbara because the rocks were similar in age and wete located in cratons (stable bedrock). His search led him to Beatons Creek which was younger than the wits, but novo started exploration ignoring this.

Hennigh works differently from every other exploration geologist ive read about. The usual way exploring new deposits is to apply conventional techniques (drilling, trenching etc) in a conventional manner until the geology is understood. Only then are theories proposed to explain the ore deposit. Hennigh works in reverse..he starts with a theory and the tries to adapt explorational techniques in an unconventional manner to suit the theory.

Beatons Creek exploration is a classic example of this approach...early on Novo was able to get Newmont to invest, taking a 30% stake. Novo began drilling..but then unknown to the general public totally stuffed up not one drilling program but three years worth of drilling resulting in Newmont deciding they had had enough and sold most of their shares. To understand how anyone could stuff up 3 years of drilling making fundamental mistakes is difficult...some idea of what went wrong is noted in the origial Beatons Creek mineralisation report prepared by consultants in 2018.

The same approach was taken with Purdys Reward...exploration dictated by a theory, not exploration providing a theory. The results were a total stuff up. Sample sizes too small, lost, a series of basic mistakes even a greenhorn geo were unlikely to make.

When Hennigh decided it was too hard he moved on to Egina and back to Beatons Creek without the Purdys Reward deposit being properly and logically explored. There was plenty of money in the war chest to do things the right way, but Sprott was unable to convince Hennigh to do it. But he was able to ensure that the war chest wasnt wasted on Beatons Creek or Egina. Novo were able to get Sumitomo to fund these projects...not Sumitomo mining, but Sumitomo Australia...an investment offshoot of the well known Japanese company that was experiencing major taxation compliance problems and perhaps needed "special" offsett investments. In any case these were projects Sprott and Newmont didnt want to have anything to do with.

This left the war chest full of money that could have been used to properly explore the conglomerate. Unable to resurect an exploration program Sprott is now insisting the war chest be put to good use...hence Hennigh has been pursuaded to recently invest in
Kallamazoo Resources and this week in New Found Gold.

Because Novo hold the management role at Purdys, no work can ever be done there unless Novo decide to start. While technically ARV has 50% of the say so, its not enough to ever get things restarted should they want to do so. With Novo spending the war chest set aside for the purpose it is difficult to see any work being done on the conglomerate again.

Under these circumstances it is difficult to give the Purdys Reward deposit any value...which is a shame given it has not been explored properly.