Two different types of drilling chasing two different types of...

Two different types of drilling chasing two different types of mineralisation.

The surface RC drilling was chasing epithermal mineralisation which usually consists of narrow, rich veins where hydrothermal activity has caused accumulation of gold in local fractures.

This drilling has been very unambitious. Only 776m in 6 holes drilling around historical gold workings. They've spent very little on this and I'm not sure what the plan was here. Maybe chasing a lucky strike while getting some info about the lithiology of the area but it didn't look like they were hoping for much.

Anyway they didn't inform the market much so it is safe to assume most the attention was already focused on the acquisition.

The diamond drilling is targeting a large Intrusion which is a completely different beast. They are most likely after a large porphyry which would never get to 50-100g/t and wouldn't need to.
Porphyries are much bigger scale and lower grade. For example the Ridgeway deposit from the Cadia district starts 500m under surface and has 44mt @ 2.6g/t au average for 3.6moz and is currently being mined underground.

The hope is that all the surface gold encountered in historical gold workings has "leaked" through hydrothermal pathways from a much larger intrusion-hosted gold system underneath.

Even though there's a lot of potential in the LFB, porphyries are notoriously hard and expensive to explore, so I wouldn't hold my breath too much. It would be beyond lucky to get proof of a large system on the first few diamond holes.

Still waiting for the prospectus but at this stage, it looks likely that the acquisition will be the way to go to generate value.