Ann: Gold Drilling Commenced at Star of Mangaroon, page-141

Excellent work @Polonium210, verification... exactly the sort of epistemological 'sceptical enquiry' I encourage all to consider. "obviously a challenge to be certain on many aspects of historical work plans/details"... respectfully generous regards DRE's data omissions, well received by the thread and a sure way to make friends and influence people. Couldn't help but have niggle myself, HC is a stage and I enjoy playing my role

People want to believe all they're told by companies and be comfortable in their investments. Fair enough, who wants to live with continual doubts fact checking reality all the time when speculative stocks are high risk and come down to luck anyway. Unfortunately, most companies don't present a reasonable and accurate picture under. Accept everything management feeds you as gospel if you like, take the blue pill because faith is bliss, but some of us want to move the odds in our favour through fact checking and knowledge. Regardless of whether the messenger is polite, walks softly or not, only fools ignore the big stick of factual, analytical enquiry...

Selective reporting and plotting of historical project data is one of the oldest tricks in the ASX explorer's book, I see it ALL the time. Leave out enough poor holes in the right places to make old projects look less tested and more open than they really are... it's a no-brainer. One give-away are gaps in the drill Hole-ID's. Another convenient 'draftee mistake' is to shift holes around sections to either 'open-up' the deposit or make it look bigger. DRE's Star of Mangaroon long section is a classic case in point (DRE's ASX released Mangaroon Au results tabled below). Apparently the ASX is happy with companies only reporting historical "Significant Drill Results" ... because, bad results aren't significant???


An easy tell that holes may have been mis-plotted on sections is checking the intersection depth against the long section (LS) vertical depth. Holes with 60 deg dip move 0.87m vertically down for every 1m drilled (and 0.5m across in plan) and most holes at The Star are 60 deg dip to approx the same W-WNW direction. The deeper downhole an ore intersection, deeper the vertical pierce point in LS but less than the ore intersection depth obviously (eg ore 19m downhole cannot be plotted 30m vertically down on LS). Draftees know this simple fact as much as geo's and non-technical management...

DRE's LS has a lot of drilling missing, we knew that from missing 'in-significant' hole-ID's, and Polonium's great work placed those missing holes on LS from Fox Resources old releases. I highlighted some of the obvious plot errors on DRE's LS below in yellow.

• MA23 with ore @ 19m downhole (DH) cannot be plotted @ 30m vertical depth (VD), that red dot should be up at ~16m VD.
• MA22 with ore at 47m DH cannot be plotted at 19m VD, that orange dot should be down around 40m VD
• SMC04 with ore at 33m DH cannot be plotted at 16m VD, that orange dot should be down around 29m VD
• MA16 with ore at 25m DH cannot be plotted at 40m VD, that orange dot should be down around 22m VD

If you correct the positions of these 4 holes alone, there is clearly more high-grade intersections above 20m VD than below, in fact only the questionable hole MDH001 is higher than 'orange' (20-404g-m) below ~20m VD.

So far as the issue of unplotted historical drilling, I copied all the holes on Fox's LS across to DRE's LS same scale for reference. Also traced Fox's ore shoot outline across. It's obvious why so much drilling was only to ~20m VD. Skinny lode, big chunk stoped out below 20m, and the waste strip ratio rises exponentially with depth in open pits. Shallow pit, low strip high grade tonnes was what they hoped would be economical back then. Fox was a larger ASX company with bigger expectations, and so wide spaced drill tested well below 20m VD to see whether The Star had genuine size potential.

On the upside, I agree with P210 that Westralian Nickel's old 1970's diamond hole MDH001 is located ~10m beneath MA40, just south of the Main Shaft, matching Welcome Stranger's detailed plan and the DD01, MA40, MA22, MA17 cross-section (I added to DRE LS for reference). No question DRE will replicate some of the historical high grades shallow and around the shaft... critical question is does it have grade and strike at depth?

GLTAH