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MINING CONNECT

PD: What would you be doing if you weren’t the
MD of Chalice?
AD: On the personal front, I would love to show
my kids the world. As a kid I was very fortunate to
travel through various parts of the world following my dad
in his job in oil and gas. It is eye opening and gives you
real perspective, particularly when you are young. Living
in Australia is great, but you need to have your eyes open
to the rest of the world. Let’s hope by 2030 we can be
travelling freely again.
Professionally, in such a dynamic trajectory that Chalice
is in, it is hard to predict six months away let alone
10 years... I can see myself still driving our projects at
Chalice and hopefully being part of other exciting things
in our industry.

PR: Advice to your children?
AD: They are only two and six months old, so it
might be a quite different world when they grow
up. I think when you live in WA obviously the mining
industry is such a source of opportunity for young
professionals. I would say don’t constrain your thinking, We are still entrepreneurial individuals backed by very Diamond drilling is set to
start at Pyramid Hill
I’d say they can do anything they want and the world is forward thinking, deep value type investors. in October
a big place. Don’t frame your expectations or ambitions They appreciate that there are other levers to be pulled in
on one set of circumstances, try and expose yourself to our exploration portfolio but they also know Julimar is a
as many different parts of as many different industries big project and understanding it will be a long process.
as you can. I think that is a good way of figuring out a bit We are drilling with four rigs, soon to be five rigs, and it
about yourself and what you are passionate about. would be a good problem to have if we keep finding new
I was lucky to be exposed to corporate finance and some zones of mineralisation. What excites me is that we have
small companies early on. I would say to my kids try and the ability to control the learning curve, and utilise our
accumulate these experiences early on in your career knowledge to make more discoveries.
and that way you really get an understanding of what Learning what moves the needle for investors and what
drives you. Running a small company is hard work and investors care about has been a good experience for me.
takes up a huge amount of your life, so if you are not
driven, you are going to quickly lose interest or burn out. PR: So, what now for Pyramid Hill Project in
You have to find out what you are really happy to put the Victoria?
hours into, because the last thing you want is to put in AD: We have a lot of third party interest right now
the hard work and not to get any reward back. on Pyramid Hill. In any case, we are getting ready for

PR: How have expectations changed for Chalice our next phase of diamond drilling which will start in early
after the Julimar discovery? October. I think we have done the hard yards there in
AD: At the beginning of the year we were hungry terms of early stage targeting. Now we have screened a
few thousand square kilometres and honed in on a few
for exploration success in Victoria and were key targets, with our main focus the Karri Prospect.
pushing really hard trying to hone in on a big
gold system. But the expectation there was to deliver a So, we think we are at the pointy end of the discovery
material result before the balance sheet was diminished journey, the question now is can we drill in the right
significantly, and now that we have made a discovery at places and uncover a major gold discovery? I am still
Julimar, the expectation has changed a little. very passionate about our project in Victoria so having
Instead, people are starting to think OK in five years’ time Julimar doesn’t necessarily detract from that, but it does
give us a platform to be even more aggressive in Victoria
where will these projects be, what are the necessary and I think we really need to do the project justice. Not to
steps ahead of getting that project developed and what mention a platform to pursue all of our other nickel and
is Chalice doing to manage those risks and unlock the gold exploration plays around Australia – it should be a
value in the most efficient way possible. great year ahead of us!

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