Onceover gave a good summary of the industry view on "first...

Onceover gave a good summary of the industry view on "first pass" aircore drilling after the recent Minyari announcement. Still pertinent. Somewhat repetitious post - apologies.

If punters expected Hemi style results then these are very disappointing. Remember however, that there were at least 300 or so holes in the first pass of Hemi with only a small number much better than the results reported today by AZY. But SO much better that the rest is history in the making of an area looking like Swiss cheese with some big holes to follow - mines. Geology is very different to the Paterson etc etc etc.

I doubt these results would have been well received even if the market wasn't having a bearish day. They are in line with the lower end of my expectations - not complete dusters that indicate there is a lot of fluid moving through a vast system looking for a place to concentrate and possibly build a large deposit. Seems to be the case for large areas of the Paterson which will keep exploration going through this cycle of activity until there are more discoveries or another pause takes place to assess the results.

The comparison of depth with Havieron is not too meaningful IMO. Both areas have cover sequences - sand then Permian sediments to the unconformity with Paterson Province rocks (not certain if this is the case at RPS but suspect it is).

At Havieron this cover is 420m while at RPS/Grey mostly less than ?50m. Schematically:


If the Havieron deposit was under the same cover as RPS there is a very good chance it would already be mined out - starting some 30-40 years ago! NCM's first DDH was in the early 1990's and probably delayed because they knew the cover would be deep.
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Reconnaissance aircore drilling for a Havieron like target would probably be done with inclined holes on say 50-100m centers with lines 2-400m apart.

To state the obvious, at Havieron it would have been a waste of money to drill aircore.

If such a target exists at RPS, or elsewhere in the Paterson, under less than 100m of cover then Aircore would be feasible. Better to be 50m or less of vertical cover. Much more than 50m vertical then RC - costs more but can easily go to 100m and, with good equipment, 500m+. Diamond drill costs become similar to RC after some 300m, as a rule of thumb, making it a strong option for going deeper to even extremes such as 3-5Kms (South African gold).

At RPS the "purple zone" of anomalous geochem has been found which gives some encouragement to continue exploration especially given the higher grades already found in 2019 drilling. IMO this is the context of significant from an exploration viewpoint. Maybe some other term can be used....
AZY et al have done AEM and Mag over most of the tenements. GAIP may be the next geophysical tool to try at RPS/Grey now there are some more distinct trends to test with this rather expensive technique.

All the known deposits/mines in the Paterson start at surface, or from the unconformity and continue to depth with Telfer going down 1.5Kms from surface. (Except O'Callaghans). Drilling at Havieron is showing a vertical extent of mineralisation of some 12-1500m. Whether or not recent discoveries are economic (Winu/Havieron) remains to be seen but once something is discovered it is likely to go to depth.

My fingers are crossed for Boxer - may only be 30% AZY but if it (or something else in 5000 sq Kms) clicks then 2c will be a thing of the past. Even a decision on developing Calibre would have an interesting impact on the SP IMO - reasonable possibility IMO.

(Much of this is from memory so DYOR)