I see that they are still making slow progress with the decline...

I see that they are still making slow progress with the decline at Havieron due to encountering soft ground, although reportedly expecting some firmer ground ahead. It seems the sort of curveball that mining can throw at you and I could imagine that if a junior miner were going it alone, this sort of thing that could throw it right off course.

Which is the great advantage of having a JV with a bigger miner like NCM, they can access expertise, equipment and resources to attack the problem and just push straight on.

In hindsight GGP perhaps gave a little too much away when NCM farmed in at a project valuation of approx US $100m but we seem to be in a much better position than they were at the time.

With 2.6m ozs, we might reasonably expect expect a valuation of say $200 per oz, valuing the Minyari project at US $520m. So if NCM (say) were to take 20% of this they would need to put approx $100m into the JV.

Would that be enough to build the open cast mine, stripping off the cover, upgrading the road, building the camp, sourcing the necessary staff and equipment to do the job in a timely manner? And if anything left over maybe do some more exploratory drilling on these satellite prospects that seems to abound in that area. Is it feasible that we could be pouring gold before the end of 2004?

Would NCM be interested in taking just 20%, along with their 10% shareholding it gives them a 30% interest.

Anyway just an idle speculation on my part, we have so many prospects in our acreage it seems almost unreal, but we just need to get that SP up before a predator (or a group of predators) come along and carve us up.