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“ Investors are looking
coVeR

through the results beyond
width and grade. Width and

grade in a drill intercept doesn’t
make a discovery, orebodies
Chalice could have raised in excess of are made when you see
$75 million primarily on the back of the continuity over large scale.
Julimar find

brownfields redevelopment stories but not easy terrain as there is a lot of cover, time and expense of exploring under cov-
after a series of disappointments in this which is characteristic of much of Aus- er, opening new search spaces in prov-
space, (see Gascoyne Resources Ltd, tralia,” he said. “Some 70% of the coun- inces in Australia traditionally ignored by
Dacian Gold Ltd, Blackham Resourc- try is under deep cover and we need to explorers.
es Ltd, etc.) investors are beginning to develop the tools, the technology, to see Bradford said technology was key to
re-evaluate the relative risk profiles of through that cover.” IGO’s exploration strategy.
greenfields and brownfields stories. Western Mining Services’ Jon Hron- “We’ve tried to embrace all technology
The market movements of explorers in sky agrees major new discoveries are available to us,” he said. “We made deci-
recent months suggests exploration is in increasingly coming from the edge of sions on what were the best geophysical
the ascendency. known mineral provinces or even be- tools for this type of terrain, identifying
Chalice, De Grey and Legend are still yond. Spectrum as the best airborne tool and
early in their assessment of new dis- “If you look at where the really big gold low and high temperature SQUID for
coveries but are already encouraged deposits have come from in WA over the ground geophysics. We trained our own
by common threads linking them to re- last few years – Gruyere, Tropicana, etc. people in it and are very few companies
cent major discoveries. Like Tropicana, – these are frontier areas and I think we with that in-house capacity.
Gruyere and Nova before them, Julimar, are seeing some success in those fron- “On geochemistry, we have covered
Hemi and Mawson have sprouted for new tier areas and that is what I think we need the whole of the Fraser Range with air-
or forgotten regions which, in the case of to see continue. core drilling, that is a huge amount of
the latter two, are masked by consider- “There is a bit of a tendency in our in- data and we have been working to im-
able depths of cover. dustry to be most comfortable looking prove skills in-house to utilise the data
Such cover makes exploration dif- where there is quite a lot of information we are collecting. It is a 63-element
ficult, time-consuming and potentially and data which is not necessarily the screen and all of those elements are po-
expensive but according to IGO manag- most exciting or prospective. We look to tential indicators to mineralisation. It then
ing director Peter Bradford, penetrating see where we can look, not where we becomes about how best we interpret
transported cover will be crucial to future need to look.” those results.”
discoveries. Rapid advances in geophysical tech- For Osborne, the vast array of informa-
“Where we are on the Fraser Range is nology and applications are lowering the tion available to geologists requires the

Page 20 JULY 2020 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT