where on earth have you been these past years. Oh how I recall those nights of reading all those great articles you found in historical archives - in those days, remember, we talked ounces per tonne. Oh how I have missed you and Mal and the rest of the gang. I'm still here along with a few and courageous souls, we held on and on, manning the pumps up to our waists until the Captain called a halt. And halt it has been. When we got on deck you had all jumped ship, headed to West Aussie I am told. Man I tell you it has been tough, too tough, some cracked completely. Since I had my head down I don't know much what happened and have tried to piece some ideas together. I think you left when we had trouble with the new shaft winder. You never even said goodbye. But back to the winder, well that wasn't the fault of the Captain but a foreign crew who said they knew what they were doing. You'll recall we looked forward to some great grades from Maxwells and Burns and Kennys reefs. You knew these well. But alas de-watering and getting the tonnages proved difficult. Some development and reef ore got stockpiled on surface.
I think our Captain handed the wheel to an enthusiastic young chap who pressed ahead spending money like he had $ 10 million behind him. He opened up new work areas left right and centre running the coffers low. He didn't have $ 10 million behind him it turns out. About the same time a mob from Ballarat built a gravity gold circuit to handle the MS ore but this took some time to get working as there were problems with crushers, separators and stuff. ( At this stage I must remind you, I know stuff all about all this, and trying to recall events through a haze of a few glasses ). As I read it, the Captain had few choices. You either go broke, shut up shop or trade insolvent and go to jail. So it seems the course was to batten down the hatches, call a halt and hang on. A few standing crew have been testing the processing plant on that ore you refer to. The Captain has posted some pictures on something called Flickr. Now, here is where you have to use some imagination. There are seven buckets with 38 kg concentrate in each. There's half a Glad freezer bag containing 1224 gms concentrate. This may or may not be representative of what is all the buckets but you could take a guess at the specific gravity of the concentrate. Since Au has an SG of 19.3 you could dream up a ratio of Au in the bag. But alas how much of the stockpile has been processed. That my friend, as you ask, is the question. How much was in the original stockpile ? I don't know but maybe someone like Plough could take a look at the photos from the top of the head frame and make a guess. Is it 2000 or 12000 tonnes ? 2000 tonnes come to my mind but that is unreliable these days.
MCO Price at posting:
11.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
