open briefing update on walhalla, page-16

A more relevant comparison might be to Queensland deep vein miner, Citigold. They also have nuggetty quartz veins. Their Warrior mine started production in November and has been stoping for the last few weeks (now that they have driven a kilometer to their deposit). Their head grade, including all the development ore, has been about 8g/t and their cash costs are around A$400/oz (probably a bit less).

They reckon as they do more stoping and less development ore, the cash costs should come down to A$350/oz or less. Their stopes are running 30g/t or more, and they expect their overall head grade to be around 14g/t.

Like GDR, Citigold are using low cost low volume operations, trying to minimize the removal of non-quartz rock.

I expect the grades and costs at GDR to be broadly similar.

BTW, the Australian gold community doesn't like deep vein mining -- they regard it as expensive and unreliable. Bendigo's failure reinforced their prejudices. If any of the east coast deep vein miners succeed, the success will lift the share prices of all of them. Bendigo was disappointing, and now Citigold is leading -- and succeeding. GDR shareholders should be cheering on Citigold. (I own both.)