Mandilla
Anglo Australian Resources NL 100% gold rights
The Mandilla project consists of 100% interest gold rights attached to two mining leases and one exploration licence located 70km south of Kalgoorlie and 20km south east of Kambalda. The project is located on the contact of a sequence dominated by mafics and ultramafics with a sequence of felsic volcanoclastics and metasediments of the Mandilla Formation. The sedimentary sequence is intruded by the Emu Rocks Granite (a high level stock of porphyritic monzogranite). The western contact of the granite is faulted by an interpreted southern extension of a splay fault off the Zuleika Shear Zone, which hosts 1 million ounce deposits at Raleigh (Kundana) and Mt Marion (Ghost Crab).
Previous exploration by WMC Resources Limited and Anglo Australian Resources NL had defined a resource of palaeochannel gold mineralisation at West Mandilla and a number of zones of supergene gold anomalism located at the granite sediment contact.
The West Mandilla deposit is a gold mineralised palaeochannel overlain by approximately 20m of overburden. The main gold-mineralised part of the palaeochannel defined at a 1g/t Au cut off is 5 -30m wide and is over 800m in length. In September 2005 Anglo Australian Resources NL announced that the deposit, based on extensive drilling to that date, was estimated using a top-cut of 100g/t Au to contain an in-pit Probable Ore Reserve of 70,100 tonnes @ 7.52g/t Au for 16,960 ounces gold.
Mining of the shallow, high-grade West Mandilla deposit commenced in July 2006 and completed in April 2007. Up to March 2007 30,493 tonnes of ore was processed under a custom milling arrangement at the third party Higginsville processing plant in Coolgardie, where ore is processed on a campaign by campaign basis. 12,450 ounces of gold at average recovered gold grade of 11.1g/t has been produced. A further 45,000t of ore remains on the ROM pad awaiting processing. Production of gold from this deposit has consistently performed above reserve grade expectations. The grade of the remaining ore is also expected to be above reserve grade.
While most of our exploration effort has been focused on the palaeochannel, bedrock targets remain a high priority for the company. Bedrock exploration this year (2007) consisted of a two phase 61 hole RC drilling program of 5718m. Targets included Selene and East Mandilla. At East Mandilla the drilling program tested the potential for a number of very shallow south dipping lodes, which are flat lying in cross section. This new model has highlighted the potential for a shallow open pittable resource.
The drilling intersected a number of high grade intersections including 4m @ 105.1g/t Au (including 1m @ 383.2g/t Au), 5m @ 8g/t Au, 2m @13.8g/t Au, 2m @ 6.79g/t Au and 12m @ 2.89g/t Au. The drilling at East Mandilla appears to have confirmed the model and located a new very high grade zone 85m below surface.
At
BM Geological Services, an independent resource consultant, estimated a resource for the
Indicated Resource 356,805 tonnes @ 3.04g/t Au for 34,873 ounces (25g/t cut)
The resource was estimated on drilling spaced at approximately 50 x 20m. Wireframes were constructed using a 1g/t Au grade halo as the basis for interpretation, with internal dilution not exceeding 1m downhole. Inverse Distance Squared (ID2) interpolation was used for the grade estimation. The deposit is characterised by the frequent occurrence of very high-grade intersections and a 25g/t Au top-cut was used. As indicated in the June Quarterly Report, the Company assesses the bedrock gold potential at the Mandilla Project highly and intends conducting further drilling to test bedrock targets.
Recent drilling programs at