Greg, I agree with the tone of your post, and it is good. But,...

Greg, I agree with the tone of your post, and it is good.

But, this gold has been mined before, as alluvial, after shedding off the conglomerate, in two places at least - and has been known about for years by prospectors with detectors.

The link between the nuggets and the conglomerate appears to have been missed - that does not surprise me given that most prospectors will only take a small sample to wash or dry blow - and nuggets would be missed more likely than not. Also if a man is going to prospect a conglomerate in the old way he will assume it was laid down locally in a stream or lake and will look at the base for associated minerals. He would expect stuff from a quartz reef or other kind of epithermal gold.

It was Novo's QH who made the connection that this could be a basin wide deposition event. That is not to say it is continuous and consistent basin wide, but that patches of Wit2 nuggets will appear basin wide, as they do.

That is a truly amazing discovery - and the richness makes it possibly even bigger than Wit1. So no matter how much we bollock Novo for statements which freaked the players out, and caused the 50% SP drop - and their 'look at me' attitude in statements, we should still recognise that without that insight Wit2 would still be undiscovered.

How it got there is now quite neatly explained by deposition from shallow seas due to a chemical change. Dr Jones describes it nicely in a presso on the IPT thread.

The basin wide theory is also the reason for the rush to the juniors - buy a junior with a cap of $12m and outcropping basal Mt Roe Basalt and you have a huge potentially for blue sky. Go read some of those threads and you will meet the posters who were all over ARV in the early days of watermelon seed nuggets. Those guys seem to be happy there - and many have connections with the detectors who are still digging up nuggets. DYOR.

As far as a JORC is concerned, you don't have to have one to start mining - if the confidence is there they can just do it. With the rise of Novo last night (which could be a leak, or just a rumour) and with DL and the team in Dubai (could be to get a haircut, or possibly to sort mining finance going forward) the stars do seem to be aligned here.

Everything comes down to the news - if DL and QH are buddy chums again and all plans are watertight at last - we can start mining at Purdy's Reward and start the move to 10 bag ARV.

If they cannot reach agreement or Novo just banks his position, there may be a further sharp fall in ARV. Not the end by any means because from comment I suspect Wit2 goes west into 100% ARV land, and look here at the basal MRB outcrops over ARV land -- and the red stars which are nuggets.




In a way I sometimes think ARV would be better off going it alone, but I am hoping for a great JV Agreement anned as early a Monday.

I have bought back some of the position I dropped, not all though as a precaution.