Hi Hee, let me say upfront that I appreciate your usual caution,...

Hi Hee, let me say upfront that I appreciate your usual caution, no suggestion of negativity but just sober contributions to counter some of the froth.

However regarding the comment about 10m hits by Torques' Cristian Moreno (as an aside, what are the chances of two ASX mining CEOs with the name Cristian Moreno?)

Actually that sort of hit in WA is considered a bit of a highlight, especially if they are shallow. For example here is some recent assay results from Global Lithium's Manna project:


So a shallow hit of 10m above 1.0% would have been written up as a highlight by Global Lithium.

And an additional thing about New Dawn is that no one expects it to turn into a standalone project, so very low capex to worry about, so the critical mass for it to be a viable mine is also much much less. For WA projects that need their own plant probably the minimum resource to justify the capex might be say 10m tonnes (in Quebec it is more like 50m tonnes). But with New Dawn it will simply be a satellite mine feeding into a processing hub.

Finally, the two blocks at New Dawn are all permitted up so anyone with an existing concentrator can quickly turn their investment in New Dawn into cash. Sure, the likes of Winsome and Patriot in Quebec have reported assays of more than 100 metres but they are a thousand kilometres or maybe eight years and hundreds of millions of dollars in capex away from producing revenue. Some of the big new discoveries in WA will be more quickly into production but that is why they are demanding such huge market caps.

So while I don't have high expectations for the amount of resources at New Dawn I do think that whatever they find will be easily and quickly monetised.