While sealed roads would be better the cost and maintenance tend to be over riding factors against them. Most operations have well formed 'gravel' roads.

By pure chance I came across this image of a truck just leaving on its 400Km journey from Telfer to Port Hedland road.
The actual location (see below) is between Telfer and Tim's Dome along a road that has been in use for some 50 years. Still not sealed.



As you can see there is a lot of dust from an unsealed road. [Golden Grove began operations in the 1990's and shipped concentrate to Geraldton. After a few years the dust stunted and killed vegetation along the route to Yalgoo leading to it being sealed - anecdotal, from memory.]

Talking about possible mine access to Minyari Dome is easier than the vagaries of how big Min and Waca may be so here are some of the Google Earth Images from my files and recent additions.





Detail of the Havieron-Telfer Cutoff through dense dune country.



This image shows that environmental and cultural issues can be worked out for pragmatic/economic - whatever - reasons.

The obvious benefit is trucking several million tons of ore from Hav-T with some 25Kms less distance than existing routes. With fuel costs rising other options may be considered - Electric trucks (Autonomous)? Conveyors? Slurry Pipelines etc.

Minyari to Telfer could piggy back off this new road infrastructure in due course. The pale blue re alignment doesn't impact as many dunes as the Havieron cut off - though they may be more important. A re-alignment would potentially reduce the need to upgrade the southern section of Min-T as well as a slight reduction in distance.

Stand alone vs Toll the existing 55+-Km track joining Minyari to Telfer would need to be upgraded and probably rationalised to being as straight as possible. Since most of the Dunes already have at least partial cut throughs environmental and cultural issues may be easier to deal with.

The Karlawinda gold mine Capex was sub $200m in a better logistical location IMO (perhaps - DYOR). Pure gold with no other products (Cu, Co Ag at Minyari). Location and metallurgy will add some cost for Minyari IMO for basic standalone Capex relative to Karlawinda. How much is the realm of future SS PFS DFS etc. Of major concern will be timing for this large expense and payback period which probably tilts the desire to be full miners to sending material to Telfer

Speculation is easy and cheap AND to be taken with a grain of salt. DYOR
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Some comments about the early March knock out announcements.

The resource at Minyari Dome needs to pass a threshold to be viable as a stand alone. Exactly what that is I don't know, To get an idea of what may be needed a poor comparison.

Karlawinda is lower grade than Minyari/W (at present) but may have more amenable to open Pit given its relatively shallow dip. It (K) may have a future underground component but IMO that is likely to be less than M/W. Both areas have regional prospectiivity that could add potential.

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SP used hole 340's long intersection as part of the knockout. My previous posts on it and other holes are still pertinent. Grade smearing is going to be a tricky issue for mine planning - probably not a knockout of the wrong type hopefully. Hole 339, as hinted, did not return as good an intersection as 340 some 60m to the west. A likely interpretation is that 339 is marginal to the main breccia pipe although grade variation is high enough to also account for such differences. The weakly mineralised 339 does match the mineralisation envelope in 340 just lower.



I have focused on the more grid NS holes. The southern 4 test the upper levels of the plunging breccia with variable grades - seems to be fairly typical that there are local narrow high grade zones that may be hit in one hole and missed by nearby holes. Statistically valid?

Hole 504D has been missing from the collar listings but showed up in the latest announcement on section 100850N. Scaling from this shows the location roughly as depicted above.





Where is the plunging breccia on this section?

• Deeper?
• Shallower?
• Stoped out by Diorite?
• Simply a less mineralised zone with a less favourable host?
• other?
  

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