SHERLOCK Holmes, that legendary detective, once famously remarked about the curious incident of the dog in the night. "The dog did nothing in the night," was the reply. "That was the curious incident," said Holmes – to which someone might ask what's that got to do with the world of mining? Everything, dear reader, because like Sherlock's dog that didn't bark in the night, there is something missing from today's mining world – discovery!
This lack of success in the resources boom which started two years ago has foxed a lot of people smarter than Dryblower. In theory, we ought to be celebrating a string of exploration successes rather than lamenting their absence.
The gloomiest observers of this situation argue that we've discovered everything that can be discovered – a variation on that wonderful saying attributed to the U.S. Patents Office 100 years ago "that everything that can be discovered has been discovered".
Well, the Patents Office was wrong, and so are the gloomsters who reckon we've run out of discoveries because over the past few days Dryblower has been rummaging around the recent crop of quarterly and other reports from explorers.
The one which he keeps coming back to is from Sally Malay Mining, the small nickel miner with interests in the far north of Western Australia and at the Lanfranchi mine in the Kambalda region.
In late July, management at Sally Malay casually included in the final paragraphs of their June quarter report, a comment that it had been looking for an extension of the Schmitz/Winner mineralised trend at Lanfranchi, in which it has a 75% stake, with the other 25% owned by the Junk brothers via their Donegal Mining.
Two holes were planned for the Schmitz/Winner hunt. The first penetrated a basaltic sequence at a depth of 292m and then "encountered an unexpectedly thick sequence of Kambalda Komatiite".
So far, so good – but some readers might require a little assistance at this point from Sherlock Dryblower.
Kambalda Komatiite is the classic nickel-rich material which was the making of Western Mining Corporation in the late 1960s, and which is found in sheets flowing out from ancient volcanic activity around what is known as the Kambalda Dome. The sheets of mineralised material can vary from a few centimetres thick to many metres – but rarely in the tens or hundreds of metres.
Most of the nickel mined in (and around) Kambalda over the past 40 years has come from Komatiite, and in that time a wealth of knowledge has been garnered by geologists as to where it is, and how to find it. Two of the most useful tools are electromagnetic measurements – and drilling.
Back to Sally Malay's first hole in the hunt for a Schmitz/Winner extension, because this is the bit analysts on the stock market seem to have missed. When the June quarter report was lodged on July 28 the hole in question "was at a depth of 800m and still within the Kambalda Komatiite sequence".
Think about it for a nano-second. That report appears to indicate that a drill bit had passed through around 500m of potentially mineralised material.
All that Sally Malay management said was "the unexpected thickness of the Kambalda Komatiite encountered by the hole has considerable exploration significance and will require a thorough re-appraisal of the geological structural model of the area".
Adding to the mystery of what Sally Malay might (or might not) report when it next communicates is a second clue detected by Sherlock Dryblower – that strong electromagnetic conductors have been encountered in the area, which will require future drilling.
One hole, or one EM anomaly, does not a discovery make. But, for the doubting Thomases who think all the discoveries have been made it's worth putting the field glasses on Sally Malay and its astonishingly thick Komatiite sequence at its Lanfranchi mine at Kambalda.
Like the dog that didn't bark in the night, Sally Malay has been rather quiet since that June quarter report.
SMY Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
