Regional Mines & Exploration

Regional Mines and MCO's 'Regional Exploration Program'

 

Morning Star Gold (MCO) believes there are also substantially under-explored areas on its current tenements of some 200km2, including high-production old mines and dykes, many of which produced high grade gold only in the 'weathered zone' and above the water table as historically, sub-water table level mining was hampered by lack of power to run pumps and mining beneath the crumbled weathered zone was in flint hard basalt housed ore bodies.

Running concurrently with the underground resource drilling at the Morning Star Goldmine in the upper ‘Gap Zone’ is MCO’s Regional Exploration Program. The Regional Exploration Program is endeavouring to establish an exploration resource target in the surrounding old mines and under-explored dykes contained within the five existing granted Mining & Exploration Licences held by Morning Star Gold NL.

MCO is systematically re-surveying and mapping relocated old workings and is currently sampling several proximal dykes to the Morning Star. These include several mines, which collectively produced over 400,000 ounces of gold at high grades, from shallow workings (around 100 metres deep) mainly above the water table, such as ‘The Comet’, 'Rose of Denmark', ‘Little Comet’, 'Wallaby', ‘All Nations’, 'Waverly', 'Tingha', ‘Reliance’, 'Hunts' and ‘Loch Fyne’ dyke systems. The Morning Star dyke by comparison was mined successfully at depths of over 700 metres below the water table and was open at depth with visible gold noted by WMC in drill core beneath the limit of its lowest workings at the time of its last closure in 1963.

MCO’s key regional targets including the aforementioned mines and dykes had some serious gold production. ‘All Nations’ (132,000 ounces production), the ‘Comet’ (64,000 ounces), the 'Waverly' (~50,000 ounces) and the ‘Loch Fyne’ (109,000 ounces of Gold - also rich in platinoids). MCO plans to test these dykes at greater depth than historic near surface workings for the presence of deeper quartz reefs through diamond drilling. All Regional Targets are being added to the Company’s 3D modelling as they are surveyed, sampled and ultimately drilled.

The Regional Exploration Program covers all targets outside of the Morning Star Goldmine itself across 3 Mining Licences (MINs) and 2 Exploration Licences (ELs). Two of the MINs are MIN 5299 (Gaffneys Creek) and MIN 5241 (Matlock), where a formal Joint Venture (JV) is underway with the Shandong Tianye Group (STG) - a significant Shanghai listed conglomerate based in the city of Jinan in Shandong Province, China. The JV holds that STG will pay MCO $4.5M in 5 tranches by late 2012 and once the funds are spent, STG will gain a 51% share of the two aforementioned Mining Licences (MINs). In addition, regional exploration is ongoing on MCO's 100% held MIN 5009 both in and around Woods Point itself.

MCO's tenements are across three main shear zones known as the Ross Creek Line (hosting the famous Walhalla / Long Tunnel / Cohens Reef goldmine owned by our close neighbours Orion), the All Nations Line and the Waverly / Tingha line of dykes and workings. MCO's current tenement maps can be found elsewhere on this website under the tab "MCO Gold Assets - Tenements"