Reports detail a field examination, a history of production and exploration, a mining resumption economic assessment, and negotiations with Jervois Sulphates (NT) Ltd. Austminex commenced its involvement in mineral exploration of the Stuart Shelf region, where it was seeking stratabound copper with a minimum deposit size of 1 Mt @ 1.5% Cu, by taking out a 12-month exploration option during 1965 over the Mount Gunson mine area, which had last been worked in 1943. Intervening activity on the prospect had been slight, comprising only a resource assessment done by Zinc Corp. during 1950-1952, when that company had drilled 9 cable tool holes along a north-south traverse laid out northwards from, and starting at, the Main Open Cut; the only mineralised intercept made then was 0.95% Cu over the depth interval 5-17 feet in a hole sited 100 feet north of the pit rim. By the 1960s, ownership of the Mount Gunson deposit ground was vested in just two mineral claims of 40 acres each, held by Jervois Sulphates, which covered the supposed best mineralised upper (sandstone) horizon subcrop area believed (by Zinc Corp.) to contain an estimated 135,000 tons of 2.77% Cu. Latterly, in August 1963, Geoscience, Inc., a geophysical service company, had taken up an opportunistic exploration licence, SML 55, covering 100 square miles surrounding the aforesaid mineral claims at Mount Gunson, in order to conduct some reconnaissance IP surveying, but the results had not been encouraging, and therefore Austminex expected this tenement to be surrendered in the near future [this surrender eventually occurred in August 1966 - see Env 403 - whereupon Austminex in turn took up the ground as SML 121]. After conducting a field examination of the Mount Gunson prospect during January 1965, Austminex designed an assessment work programme aimed at determining whether sufficient ore reserves existed to support the economic feasibility of a shallow open pit mining operation. Such an operation would be conducted preferably at a 2:1 stripping ratio, to give production that would support a milling rate of 500 tons per day, treating 1/4 inch grind size ore by column acid leaching followed by precipitation/flotation, to yield 90-97% Cu from pregnant lixivant. Initially it was proposed to carry out percussion drilling on a 200 foot grid laid out around the two mineral claims (via 54 x 50 foot deep holes) so as to technically determine the grade and limits of known copper mineralisation, before the option agreement expired on 1/1/1966. This drilling work, of which only about 1000 feet had actually been completed by that date, indicated the presence of more than 500,000 tons of greater than 1% Cu within the limited area penetrated. The outcome was enough to convince Austminex to exercise its purchase option over the mineral claims in February 1966; immediately prior, in December 1965, the company had taken up 15 square miles surrounding them as the subject SML 96, in order to allow the wider drilling to proceed. Since the grant of this licence, Stages I and II of prospect assessment work completed to date have included 11,014 m of percussion drilling (over 200 holes), auger drilling (29 holes totalling 300 m), drill cuttings analyses, and metallurgical testing of samples obtained in areas of known mineralisation. In the favoured three areas of quartzite host rock where mineable oxide copper and secondary copper sulphides occur within 60 m of the surface, recent drilling has established the presence of undeveloped ore reserves of 1.8 million tons of 1.2% Cu, having a computed overall waste : ore stripping ratio of 1.7 : 1.