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more who have all gone on to experience I look back and think I think it was one of those situations where
success at home and abroad. you make your own luck.”
Lunnon continues to carve out its own I’m extremely lucky Luck can be a generous term to pin to
name in the West Australian nickel space, that fate decided I should the Lunnon team, which actually formed
with a notable achievement being the dis- its roots nearly 10 years ago. The compa-
covery of the Baker shoot in January which “ orbit Kambalda. ny’s management team includes explora-
brought with it an early hit of 7m @ 9.22% tion and geology manager Aaron Wehrle,
nickel. Less than nine months later, Bak- who also once worked for WMC. Funnily
er contributed 15,800t @ 2.8% nickel to a historic shaft at the Foster target requires enough, Wehrle now lives next door to the
KNP’s resource. dewatering before it can be used due to it old house Ainscough and his family called
In mid-July, Baker performed again, being “flooded to the surface”. home in Kambalda.
delivering its best hole to date at 23m @ “The plan at the moment is to push as Such coincidences serve as a reminder
6.78% nickel, including 14m @ 8.13% and hard and as fast as possible on the permit- to the long history the Lunnon team has in
7m @ 5.92%. ting,” Ainscough said. “The data collection town.
A total of 8,000m RC and 3,000m dia- and submission you need to make to the “When we IPO’d, we had been working
mond drilling has been completed at Baker department, that’s light touch work that we on this ground for a long time,” Ainscough
and ongoing results will help to infill and can push ahead with aggressively. The said. “So, outside looking in, people only
extend the most recent KNP resource es- plan is to get those done and get them in see your company from when you hit the
timate. so that we then have the option to start de- bourse.
watering.” “We’ve all actually been involved in and
A $30 million capital raising in around Kambalda for more than 20 years
mid-April will allow Lunnon to push and we do feel like we have had a really
ahead on the permitting front. successful 12 months, but it hasn’t been an
“We’ve allocated some money overnight success.
from the April raising towards the “To come inside the drilling coverage of
dewatering,” Ainscough said. “We a company like WMC that knew the ground
are now going out and speaking to intimately, and to still bring up good, shal-
some of the companies that do the low, high-grade discoveries, it speaks vol-
pumping. umes for what a fantastic patch of ground
“Bellevue Gold [Ltd] is prob- Kambalda is.
ably the best analogue for what we “You never go anywhere as a young
potentially might do, where they man, in my case working overseas, think-
dewatered Bellevue gold mine… ing you’ll be there 35 years later. Now that
they dewatered down to 250m, it has happened, unfolding progressively
re-entered the decline and started over those three decades – bringing up
drilling from underground.” a family in Kambalda, having a child in
Ainscough confesses
Lunnon managing director Ed Ainscough had little he did not “have a crystal
idea the mark Kambalda would have on his career ball” after the April raising
when he cut his teeth as a graduate geologist more came before the global re-
than 30 years ago sources market entered a
period of turbulence.
Tribulations have been fuelled
While shallow, high-grade hits are al-
ways a blessing for any explorer, Ains- by conflict in Ukraine, supply chain
cough is ready to push the drilling under- disruptions, investor uncertainty,
ground to take the project to the next level. fuel constraints and inflation.
“At Baker, and I say this a lot, we’re “The timing [of the raising] was
blessed because [the mineralisation] is chiefly driven by the fact we were
only 100m deep on average,” he said. working on the acquisition of the
“However, the geology of nickel deposits in new mineral rights to the ground
Kambalda are very long and plunging with on the north side of Lake Lefroy
a short strike length – they’re like ribbons from Gold Fields,” Ainscough
or cigars, pinching and swelling like an egg said. “We probably would have
carton. raised the money a bit earlier but
“There comes a point when you’re ex- because that deal was on foot, we A WMC relic trapped in time
ploring from surface and with the risk-re- had to wait until we announced it.
ward of continuing to drill ever deeper dia- “In hindsight, after we came out of the
mond holes, you have to commit and get trading halt, I think we went out to about Kalgoorlie and enjoying the career from a
underground to be able to drill it on a much $1.30/share on the market which tells me professional geology point of view because
closer spacing. people liked the deal and that we doubled it’s such a stimulating place – I look back
“That’s to get that inevitable uplift that our footprint. and think I’m extremely lucky fate decided I
other junior companies like Independence “Sitting here in July…we look back and should orbit Kambalda.”
[IGO Ltd], Panoramic [Resources Ltd] and have to say we made the right decision – Fraser Palamara
Mincor [Resources NL] have achieved. in January to go has hard as we could at
You can’t keep doing it at surface.” Baker and get that drilled and get those re-
A new decline is planned for Baker while sults out because they were good results.

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