Sonia Madigan:
We’re at Diggers & Dealers in Kalgoorlie and I’m with Lefroy Exploration’s MD Wade Johnson.
Now Wade has bought some samples in from new ground just recently secured. Can you tell us about that Wade?
Wade Johnson:
Yeah, thank you.
The ground is a tenement or a piece of land we call a location 45 to about 40 kilometres south of Kalgoorlie. So it’s situated between Kalgoorlie and Kambalda. It’s called Location 45 and it’s freehold land property. So what I mean by freehold, is it’s premium freehold land in Western Australia. So the mining act was not applied, but with the acquisition of the mineral rights from the landowner, which is Franco Nevada, we also acquired the Mount Martin gold deposit and the Goodyear nickel deposit.
Sonia Madigan:
So you bought some samples in for us. What’s the top grade we can see here?
Wade Johnson:
This is an interval. It’s a diamond hole drilled in 1996 by a company called Titan Minerals. So it was drilled there back in 1996, it’s a diamond hole, it’s about 560 metres deep, but this core tray, this interval, starts at 544 metres, but the highest grade nickel
we got, this is nickel sulphides, is 12.1 per cent nickel in this hole, so that’s an interval
of mineralisation with copper in it as well, in the hole.
So this is a Goodyear and the property hasn’t been drilled since about 2010.
Sonia Madigan:
So what are your plans there?
Wade Johnson
One of the first things that’s underway right now, there’s a resource at Goodyear of 391,000 tonnes of ore containing about 3.8 per cent nickel. Our first job is to get that from the JORC 2004 Code into the JORC 2012. So that’s underway right now. Then once we’ve done that, we’ll be planning drilling programs to increase and validate that resource.
Sonia Madigan:
So what do you hope to achieve being here at Diggers & Dealers?
Wade Johnson:
Well, I’ve been coming to Diggers & Dealers since I think the first time I came was back
in 1997 and I think the first thing is number one obviously for Lefroy it’s showing off
the business what we’ve got in the business, so assets, and then number two I think it’s
a great venue to catch up with old colleagues, friends etc and then obviously number
three is to go around and have a look at the other companies and what they’re
doing.
Sonia Madigan:
And I guess that’s important because things change all the time, don’t they, even
in this industry?
Wade Johnson:
Yes, that’s right. I think it’s keeping aware of what’s going on in the industry, who’s doing what, what commodities they’re exploring for and of course it’s also catching up with fund managers, brokers etc to really project the company and show what the company’s doing on the Lefroy gold project near Kalgoorlie.