exploration update finally, page-14

?Copperheads?, in answer to your queries, it's not so much about doing it 'right', it's IF it's there! I don't have a problem with various the explorers in the 'Doolgunna Camp' or their methodologies. For the most part they are being guided by experienced and successful explorers.

I do have a problem with people talking up drilling that may have been a ?technical success? rather than hitting any significant mineralisation (0.3 metres of copper mineralisation ? seriously???)

The question becomes IS IT THERE?? A fact a few posters on this forum seem fully convinced that it has to be!! Guess what? It does NOT have to be there at ALL!

To answer your question ?Shady?, VHMS?s do have a tendency to occur on 'clusters' or rather lenses, and sure, there is actually no better spot to explore than around a large discovery like DeGrussa! But the exploration team at another Western Australian VHMS, namely Golden Grove (~30 Mt), will be the first to tell you that you can get plenty of 'smoke' and no flame with WA VHMS systems!

Golden Grove, south of Yalgoo in the South Murchison of WA, is a large Zn-Cu rich VHMS system and has been very profitable for various owners, including Normandy, Newmont, Oxiana and now MMG. However the exploration has been technically challenging, and at times delivered disappointing results, despite being undertaken in and around a ?world-class? VHMS system .

To give you some of the key points for Golden Grove:

1. The mineable copper and zinc lodes predominantly sit clustered in two mine locations (Gossan Hill & Scuddles) along a relatively short strike length (~5 kilometres) but now extend to well below 1000 metres depth. The individual mines only have strike lengths of 500-1000 metres, so they are quite discrete!

2. In nearly 30 years of intense and well thought out (academically and technically) exploration, little of economic significance has been found outside the main mine area ? although their has been some success of late.

3. Exploration along over 35 km of strike at Golden Grove has yielded plenty of ?prospects?, ie.?smoke?, but little to no ?fire?.

The point I?m making is that if the Doolgunna camp is anything like Golden Grove, DeGrussa MAY be the main show and everyone else is just playing around the edges. Of course I could be wrong, and someone else may have the ?big one?, in which case they?re worth a punt? There is of course the argument that DeGrussa isn?t even a VHMS, but we?ll leave that alone for the time being.

IMO backing the players surrounding DeGrussa is a ?high risk with potential high reward? game, but what those players should NOT try and do is dress up poor results as something to get excited about. There are plenty of places in WA where you can generate results similar to TLM?s latest announcement, and as such they need to be looked at objectively and in context.

The 'targeting' tools being used by various companies and what they SHOULD be looking for? Well that?s a whole different discussion!