updates reply from justin, page-16

Guys, there's a stonking environmental liaility at Peak which Barrick Gold left to MZM. Its a prolific area, but these guys have got no hope of turning it into anything more than a circus of director oppies and fees.

I ought to know, I looked at this a couple of years back, there's not much hope for the place unless you find a whole new Harmony or Enigma and the Au price sticks its head well over AUD$1,000/oz.

Durack is a dog. GLN drilled it and didn't upgrade the resource one iota, and Enigma is far too low grade and far too deep. Remember, GLN had a million ounce resource but only 200KOz reserves at best - and that was with Yarlarweelor, Toms and Horseshoe. Resources are well different to Reserves, and Peak Hill looked worse than GLN's swag of goodies did, at the time.

The Peak Hill Dome has a lot of smoke and made a fair chunk of Au (650kOz produced) but the remnant resources are all at depth below ancient, unstable pits, with no infrastructure or mill within cooee (Fortnum being 70km up the road, a bit far for trucking). To see a mine in the region you'll need Barrick, Troy, Montezuma and Sandfire Resources, let alone Grange and Desert Fox, to all consolidate their various 100KOz bits and squibs, and even then I doubt you'd get a tidy 600KOz global reseve out of it. Maybe if you are really lucky, someone will find something sizeable on the Goodin or Doolgunna Faults and you'll change the scene, but right now, and since 2001, its been a stalemate.

The manganese is a joke. It was mined in the region of Horseshoe Range by a private mob, and they trucked it to Geraldton. It was hideously poor grade, full of clay, and the trucking contractor was at one stage owed $500K. Sum total, 40Kt grading sub 38% Mn. The deposits are all stranded on top of mesas or are remnant concretions in creeks, nothing is really worth a lick of spit and its 500km from the coast. Best to avoid thinking about this play unless you really think MZM is going to get exceptionally lucky and find a decent hardcap on a mesa which is devoid of clays that someone somehow missed. Given its not hard to find exposed hills around those parts, I'd say this is unlikely bordering on fantasy.

But, with enough work, and a bit of sense on behalf of their neighbours, they'll be able to get something off the ground with Au, for perhaps a sweet $10M of further drilling and a collectivised effort aimed at returning some money to about half a dozen companies. Odds of this happening are snowball like.

Just some stuff I recall from my time exploring in the region.