In April 2010, Resource Capital Research submitted that the MCO regional setting held “excellent potential for a 3-4 million ounce resource base.”
• Recent exploration has demonstrated that new reefs can be discovered at very low cost, and it seems the more MCO looks, the more they find, but a quick overview of but a few of these prospects includes:
o Waverly: less than 900 m from Morning Star Mine, the dyke is narrow (roughly 8 feet wide), and MCO controls about 5 km of strike length along the most prolific portion of the dyke; there are indications of 2-3 parallel dykes that have not been drilled; MCO has completed a 6-hole diamond drill program that delineated the geometry of the dyke and are now in the process of planning an additional drilling campaign from two separate locations; within two weeks of its discovery in December 1863, 15 claims were pegged out over a one-mile stretch of workings despite the dyke being both removed www.emergingtrendsreport.com 27 27 from and 400 m above the closest water; historic production: 50,000 ounces at 1 oz per ton.
o Comet: approximately one mile from the Morning Star Mine, it had historic high-grade production of 64,000 oz;
o Little Comet: nearby, this narrow dyke ranges from 6-10 feet wide but over 600 feet long; 3 MCO grab samples in 2008 from the exposed dyke assayed at 8 g/t, 21 g/t and 45 g/t; both Comet mines were historic producers but only worked to a shallow depth; MCO is currently sponsoring a Monash university student’s geological honors project to determine via geochemical testing whether the ‘Comet’ dykes are related, which would increase the exploration potential of the area and raise the exciting prospect of a virgin dyke between the two.
o Reliance: west of Gaffneys Creek and approximately 10 km from Morning Star mine; prior to MCO undertaking the project in November 2009, there were virtually no historic records or maps of the workings: MCO established that the historic workings are located in a dyke bulge of significant size, measuring 35m in width, which may put it on a par with the A-1 dyke; historic workings were very shallow, less than 20 m, and the site is easily accessed; MCO is awaiting approval from DPIV to commence a 3-hole diamond drill program to test the dyke’s size.
o Shamrock: constitutes essentially virgin territory but was known to host copper, cobalt and palladium in addition to gold; an update will be forthcoming.
o Rose of Denmark: significant work has been done to upgrade the access road to an all-weather, all-year standard, and mapping of the underground workings has commenced; a 120 m blockage is currently being cleared and an underground diamond drilling & sampling program will commence once completed; in 1893 a tribute party mined 2000 ounces at an average grade of 2 oz per ton; historic production: 20,000 oz;
o Dempsey: site of the first reef discovery and operation, a MCO channel sampling of a quartz reef with laminations along a small historic adit ranged from 8-15 g/t; electrical power runs in to site of the gravity plant that was destroyed in the 2006 bush fires; historic production was estimated to be 20,000 oz;
o Hunts: 1 dyke and 1 separate reef; the exposed dyke is highly mineralized and fractured and can be observed underground via the Victoria adit, which at the point where it intersects the Hunts dyke produced grab samples assaying 15 g/t; one drill hole into the www.emergingtrendsreport.com 28 28 Hunts Dyke in 2006 assayed 135 g/t over 1.4 m and indicated the presence of a number of prospective reefs below the historic workings; the gravel road into the mine has been improved to allow easy access, and the historic adit has been rebuilt and refurbished; production from an open cut operation at the surface of the dyke yielded 20,000 oz;
o Loch Fyne: a large dyke measuring roughly 700 by 280 feet; situated at a higher elevation, the historic workings extended down to 750 feet; the original adit is 2000 feet long, of an unusually broad width, and remains in good condition; also mined for platinum group metals (PGM) during World War Two; historic production of 109,000 oz and an unknown amount of PGM;
o All Nations: 2 dyke bulges and one reef that was successfully mined for gold outside the dyke; underground access via old mining adits, the underground has been mapped and sampled by MCO, revealing there has been no systematic work conducted on All Nations below a depth of 400 feet from the surface; a 5-hole diamond-drilling program is being implemented as we go to press; historic production was 132,000 oz.
• Ore from Loch Fyne and All Nations would be processed at the Morning Star mill hub, but producing significant amounts of ore from the Rose of Denmark, Dempsey and Hunts would increase the likelihood of the addition of a second mill hub; central to the three mines with electrical power in place, Dempsey appears the most likely site candidate at the moment.
