During licence Year 15 (2008-2009), activities at Mount Gunson comprised: - pegging of three Mineral Claims at the MG 14 deposit in December 2008; - acquiring part of a larger project-wide ground gravity survey during April-May 2009 (510...
During licence Year 15 (2008-2009), activities at Mount Gunson comprised: - pegging of three Mineral Claims at the MG 14 deposit in December 2008; - acquiring part of a larger project-wide ground gravity survey during April-May 2009 (510 stations read on EL 3264 at various line and station spacings closer than 500 m x 500 m); - performing a QEMSCAN mineralogical study on 5 samples of MG 14 orebody crushed drill core; - undertaking metallurgical testwork on the large-diameter drill core samples collected from MG 14, at the Ian Wark Research Institute, University of South Australia, to establish the ore's flotation behaviour under specific optimised conditions. This work was successful in identifying mineral separation and handling parameters which achieved an acceptable balance between copper recovery and copper concentrate grade. During licence Year 16 (the first year of renewed EL 4460), work comprised: - the ongoing conduct of feasibility studies on the MG 14 and Windabout deposits, including metallurgical and engineering studies, marketing studies, geotechnical studies and resource evaluation and preliminary mine planning studies [see attached detailed reports]; and - the drilling of 5 large-diameter cored holes at each of MG 14 and Windabout, for a total of 566.28 m, to obtain additional orebody drill core samples to submit for metallurgical testwork. During licence Year 17, activities operated by Xstrata Copper were mostly restricted to doing data analysis and review, as part of a wider project target generation process that was begun upon the company's majority earn-in. The work in part entailed reviewing and processing geophysical datasets, and building 3D models of various target areas. A ground gravity survey of 280 stations was read on two grids over the Con Ryan (located on EL 4187 Yeltacowie) and Windabout North-east gravity anomalies during April 2011, to infill earlier 2007 semi-regional coverage, using 500 m x 500 m station spacings closing in to 250 m x 500 m. An MT survey over the Elaine prospect was initiated in late March 2012. During licence Year 18, Xstrata Copper completed the MT surveying at the Elaine and Elaine North prospects, with data acquired at 178 stations located at 250 m intervals along 10 lines spaced 1 km apart. The passive MT technique appeared to identify well the unconformity between Proterozoic basement and the younger, more conductive cover sediments. Some low resistivity anomalism was identified in the top of the underlying Proterozoic basement at Elaine prospect, coinciding with a positive gravity response in a structurally favourable environment (northerly pinchout against the intersecting Cattlegrid and Elizabeth Creek faults), and was subsequently drilled during July-August 2012. A single north-northeastwards inclined, fully diamond cored hole MGD70 (TD 997.7 m) reached basement at 556 m downhole depth, but failed to encounter either significant alteration or mineralisation. Below the pre-Pandurra unconformity the basement lithologies comprised, in downward succession, carbonate rich sediments of unknown origin; felsic and mafic phases of the Gawler Range Volcanics (GRV); coarse foliated granite of the Donington Suite; and gabbro, likely of the Gairdner Dyke Swarm. Alteration is relatively weak throughout, mainly of chloritic and sericitic nature. Mineralisation is poor, confined to rare blebs of chalcopyrite and pyrite in qtz-calcite veins within mafic GRV. The best drill core assay result was 0.2% Cu from 787 m downhole, which is part of 1.9 m @ 0.16% Cu from 787 m. The only other intervals above 0.1% are 1 m @ 0.11% Cu from 782 m and 1 m @ 0.17% Cu from 815 m. There were no significant gold results (best value 0.02 g/t Au). The MT anomaly's source was attributed to a fine grained carbonate unit, after laboratory petrophysical measurements were made on the recovered drill core (7 samples measured in October 2013 for mass density, porosity, magnetic susceptibility, electromagnetic conductivity, galvanic resistivity, IP chargeability). During licence Year 19, Noranda Pacific / Xstrata Copper did no field work. An office-based targeting study did not identify any new prospects. In consequence of this, the JV partners began to consider project farm-out options. In January 2014, metallurgical testwork was begun by new private farminee Torrens Mining on drill samples that had been collected by Gunson Resources from the Excised Area in 2010. The focus of the work was to establish a low cost metallurgical processing flow sheet to produce copper, cobalt and silver metal by agitated column leaching the fine-grained ore from the MG 14 and Windabout deposits with sodium cyanide solution, then either ammonia or sulphuric acid. The cyanide solution was expected to dissolve copper and silver, and ammonia or sulphuric acid should dissolve the cobalt. These prepared metal-rich solutions would then be batch processed by electrowinning, an established technology, to release their contained metals. Preliminary results of this work showed that almost 90% of the copper from the MG 14 and Windabout deposits is cyanide-soluble, and can be recovered with four hours of leaching. In June 2013, a new JORC 2012-compliant Indicated Mineral Resource for the MG 14 deposit was calculated for Gunson Resources by consultant geologist Tim Callaghan, based on data from 176 drillholes, including 147 diamond holes. At a 0.5% Cu cut-off grade, the new resource is 1.62 Mt averaging 1.4% Cu, 397 ppm Co and 14 ppm Ag. During licence Year 20, Strandline Resources (changed licensee name) did no field work on EL 4460, but it undertook a program of data consolidation and compilation incorporating historic exploration data with the more recent information provided by former JV partner Noranda Pacific, aiming to identify occurrences of mineralisation that had not been followed up in previous years. Most of the reported work for 2014-2015 was done on the Excised Area by Strandline and its farm-in partner Terrace Mining Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Torrens Mining Limited, and was as follows: - retaining consulting firm Mining and Process Solutions Pty Ltd (MPS) to undertake metallurgical testwork involving fifteen different stages of examination, as directed by Torrens Mining; - appointing MPS to act as Study Manager for the feasibility phases of the Mount Gunson Project; - performing a project development cost scoping study plus pre-feasibility metallurgical and mining studies for the proposed development by Torrens Mining of Windabout and MG 14; and - completing financial models that identified the potential to create an economically viable mining project, by utilising the cash flows generated by mining the shallow MG 14 deposit to support the establishment of a long-life mining operation on the Windabout deposit. Cyanide Leach Variability Testing of 52 composited drill-hole samples from the Windabout deposit yielded copper recoveries to solution of between 40% and 95%, with a mean of 72% of the head grade. Mineragraphic analysis of leached tails from the leach tests provided strong evidence that the leaching of the high tenor copper species, mainly chalcocite, is total and that the majority of the unleached copper exists as chalcopyrite. Similar testwork done on a more limited series of samples from MG 14 produced recoveries of 85% to 89% of the head grade to solution. In order to demonstrate that the un-leachable cobalt and silver could be recovered from the leach tails, and also to recover the unleached copper, two flotation tests of the leach residues were run, one for each of Windabout and MG 14. Preliminary results showed that, when combined with the cyanide leach process, about 80% of the cobalt, 30% to 60% of the silver, and in excess of 80% of the total contained copper should be recovered. During licence Year 21, no field work was done. Ongoing hydrometallurgical benchtop testwork by MPS suggested that only 10% or less of the contained copper may be non-recoverable by any economically viable extraction technique. This work examined the use of a leachate composed firstly of glycine, and then of a mixture of cyanide and glycine, drawing on current research work undertake on the leaching of base metals with glycine by Curtin University (Oraby and Eksteen, 2015). It appeared that an agitated cyanide-glycine leach and flotation of the leach tails may be practically applied to the Windabout and MG14 ores. Torrens Mining currently proposes that at MG14 the shallow (20 m thick) resource overburden will be mined with a conventional truck and excavator operation. The ore itself at both MG14 and Windabout may be mined with a Continuous Surface Miner (CSM), examples of which have lately been used in the WA iron mining industry with reported success on very much harder ores than the friable shale ores at Windabout and MG14. At Windabout, the thicker overburden, some 50 m to 80 m deep, demands a different approach. Given the relatively weak and soft sandstone overburden, together with the availability of mains electrical power, a review of available mining technologies identified that using a Bucketwheel Excavator (BWE) or a large hydraulic excavator in conjunction with an in-pit crushing station to remove the overburden should be considered. Under both mining scenarios, overburden is removed from the mining face by a conveyor belt system and feed to a re-stacker for permanent stowage in the mined-out areas. Costing of the overburden mining and restacking in a purpose-designed mine was undertaken and found to be an economic possibility, thus giving greater certainty to critical mining and capital cost estimates in the feasibility studies. On 17 March 2017, Gindalbie Metals Ltd (Gindalbie) announced a farmin and joint venture agreement with Terrace, under which Gindalbie has the right to earn up to a 75% interest in EL5636, EL5108 and EL5333 by completing certain funding obligations. That agreement became unconditional on 19 May 2017 and Gindalbie is presently funding exploration activities on EL5636. Throughout the current reporting period, Torrens continued metallurgical testwork and detailed planning for a pre-feasibility study into the mining of Windabout and MG14, following delivery of a scoping study in the previous year. Under the terms of the farmin agreement, a regional exploration assessment study was undertaken, with a study of the historical drilling at the Gully sediment hosted Cu-Co deposit. The study was completed by consultant geologist Ian Garsed and confirmed a copper-cobalt-silver deposit with potential economic tenor, but is poorly defined with current drilling. Metallurgical testwork investigated the potential for Cu, Co and Ag extraction from the MG14 concentrate, utilising cyanide and glycine leaching. A drilling program for the MG14 and Windabout deposits was also designed to facilitate the collection of 500 kg of samples for prefeasibility metallurgical testwork. During licence Year 22, to 24th March 2018, the following activities were completed on the tenement: - Cultural heritage survey of Windabout and MG14 deposit areas in preparation for planned drilling. - Exploration drilling programmes at both the MG14 and Windabout deposits, 34 holes and 368 m of HQ3 diamond drilling. - Analyses of drill core and drill hole collar surveying. - Metallurgical testwork program including beneficiation and flotation testing for both deposits. - Analysis of samples using the Minalyzer x-ray diffraction process to determine copper and cobalt grades, obtain pseudo-photographic images and provide rock quality data. - Update of the JORC-compliant Mineral Resource estimates for both MG14 and Windabout – see included report by Tim Callaghan. The deposits contain significant Cu, Co and Ag mineralisation with 1.83 Mt at 1.24% Cu, 334 ppm Co and 14g/t Ag at MG14 and 17.67 Mt at 0.77% Cu, 492 ppm Co and 8g/t Ag at Windabout, reported at a cut-off grade of 0.5% Cu equivalent. - Commencement of a regional-scale assessment of exploration potential of the tenement, initially focussing on assessment of historical exploration data and processing and interpretation of newly released Gawler Craton Airborne Survey geophysical data.