underground treasure

Ever since Holterman's massive golden wedge was unearthed in 1872, some of us have wondered what else might be hidden in those veins of quartz under the village of Hill End. Thanks to methodical exploration by Hill End Gold Limited, we are discovering that a wealth of underground treasure remains.

I've now given the latest HEG announcement a more thorough going over and these are my thoughts.

* Higher levels in the current mine contain wide veinsets likely to be inexpensively extracted by bulk mining methods. Current development and drilling is piercing these wide veinsets on a 25m X 10-20m grid. This will determine the economics of bulk mining by establishing the size of the resource.

* The company is about to start a stope and mine another high grade pod of ore on the 640 level. Ore from this level is the easiest to extract, it is grading at 1oz/t and the pod is 60m long and 1.1m wide. I calculate this one pod will produce around $A1.5M of gold as it is extracted over coming weeks.

* Within the rich ore pods are shoots of ore grading 10oz/t. The company routinely extracts ore of this grade although the overall grade is much lower. 50m further North past the upcoming stoping operation there is a favourable location for an ultra rich ore shoot. This ore could grade at 100oz/t or better. If the company can develop the skills to target the high and ultrahigh shoots of ore, the mining operation will become much more efficient.

* The drilling program has now extended the footprint of the mineralisation another 500m to the North. This substantially increases the size of the potential resource at Hawkins Hill/Reward.