I emailed Simon yesterday, with a couple of questions. He...

I emailed Simon yesterday, with a couple of questions. He replied very quickly: nothing new, but a bit of 'colour'.

1. for the Burnakura Gold project, are you finding obtaining the right staff to be an impediment? Meekatharra is seeing a lot of other development at the moment!

Reply: "We thought that this would be the number one challenge however we have so far recruited General Manager, Mining Manager, Process Manager and Commercial Manager all without too much trouble."

What has attracted them is the company culture and an options package. I am concerned that it will be more difficult to fill the more junior roles where they are more interested in Salary levels and how many squash courts we have in the camp (None!)."


2. for Jervois, there was mention of "good infrastructure" for the project. Is this just in terms of power, roads etc, or is there processing infrastructure also on site?

Reply: "Jervois is located 300 km NE of Alice Springs.

Concentrate will travel approx. 200km down the Plenty Highway to the Alice Darwin rail line and then be exported from Darwin port. There appears to plenty of water available in a dam and from bore fields. Power will be an issue – either diesel gensets or we will run gas approx. 200km from the Alice to Darwin Gas line.

There are no towns nearby so I anticipate a fly in fly out roster from Alice Springs. We have a 1.5km airstrip at the site.

The processing plants on site are only good for a museum."

3. for Andash, can you provide an update on the local opposition to the project? This seems to be the only material stumbling block.

Reply: "I believe that we are in the final stages of reaching agreement with all of the locals. It is a very hard thing to put a timetable to but we currently expect to start construction early in the new year."