Hi all, I just spoke to Dean out at Steve's Reward, an area Dean's first boss loved. All the drilling is going well and I did not ask how the cores looked as that would be inappropriate.
I rang him to talk about the Illaara Greenstone belt and slide 19 of the presentation. Holy snapping duck manure; what a prospect, no wonder they did not sell it once they had cash relief. We are all concentrated on Mangaroon, which meant I sort of missed this.
We may think WA has been drilled over thoroughly in the past but not so. Mangaroon and Illaara were missed just like the GOR ground opened up years ago. The fact remains that gold deposits are not formed in isolation. The Yilgarn Craton and much of WA is akin to one huge gold system. The Illaara greenstone belt is west of Laverton which has yielded many large discoveries. Soils and rock chips prove the area is rich with gold so it is a matter of time before we find "more gold sooner" out there. It is part of a live gold system!
As Spartan CEO said a few months ago;
"there is no such thing as a low grade greenstone belt." It took them time and a fresh look with modern techniques and voila - a big rich discovery.
I have been looking at structures, like the above, for two decades now, most containing established gold deposits. Note the numerous dilation jogs (bends) along this 60km belt. How did they "score" this ground position and how did it not receive the attention it deserved?
Answer; assumptions are made about spending huge amounts of money on drilling on unknown areas and hence; GOR found a huge deposit with a very low strip ratio out east in rocks that had been overlooked
due to assumptions made on an economic basis. Previous holders had assumed the rocks were too young and would have missed the deposition events. Wrong. Tropicana also just outside the Yilgarn Craton in the same category of assumptions questioned.
I am keen on Mangaroon do not get me wrong, but even more so on Illaara ...and Dean agrees there is a fantastic opportunity out there. The cross-faulting through major structures and the lack of meaningful drilling adjacent and along the major fault structures, combined with those fault "bends" suggests there is a
strong possibility of the discovery of a stand alone deposit. Dean said the plan is to get out there by the end of the year. I would bet this is where a large deposit will be found first.
I topped up based on this today, and not based on what Dean said about Illaara either. It was great to hear his views as a qualified geo. This looks like a forgotten gem in the hands of a soon to be cashed up junior explorer / toll treat campaign (multiple I would also bet) self-funded company. Apparently the SPP is going well and now we have a large buyer(s) accumulating of late. Their appetite obviously cannot be sated in the cap raise or SPP. I just had to circle back to this presentation as I had been put off, and almost missed all this based on a flawed assumption.
GLTAH CW
(20min delay)