the secret prospector, page-18

Patroyd,

I personally thought the video was great.

Regarding "rubbish being used to test the Gecko" I think you are right. Better to test the plant with low grade rather than high grade ore. Hopefully the testing is all over and they can get stuck into getting rid of the present stock pile.

The grey stuff on the video is mostly altered host rock from around the quartz reef which contains the majority of the gold. The blasted and mined material shows relatively little quartz reef because its in smaller pieces compared to the more cohesive dyke host. Also the fines, mixed with mud, colours almost everything grey. There's always going to be more host dyke rock in the ore compared to the narrow gold reefs. Its called dilution and its just a part of life mining these narrow reefs. Its the grade of gold in the reef that matters and as we all know it can be very high in some reefs so the we can expect high grade ore from Maxwells and Kenny's reefs even with the host dyke rocks diluting the ore.

The present stock pile is going to be poor in comparison to the ore to be mined out of the prepared stopes at Maxwells reef. We should not be waiting for great production numbers from this and that's verified by management in the expected grades for the processing for this years ore.

The main thing is they are producing now and soon it will only be from high grade ore. The quicker they can chew through the present stockpile the better.

cheers Ari