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coVeR

Gold Road’s discovery of Gruyere – now
plus-5 moz gold – followed a familiar
pattern of dominant land position on an
under-explored, overlooked belt

deposit found by the company on the sition on the Fraser itself and is one of Dorsch sees the trend for larger ground
Yamarna belt but the first to prove eco- the last juniors standing after the initial positions continuing.
nomic. post-Nova rush. “Fewer companies with larger land
“For good greenfields exploration you “The Fraser Range was broken up packages … time and time again, we see
need big, belt-scale landholdings be- like grandma’s patchwork quilt; different companies able to make a difference and
cause there is still a huge amount of hit- companies with smaller tenement hold- move up the leagues in terms of valuation
and-miss associated with exploration,” ings, but one by one they learned the les- if they take a long-term view and are will-
he said. “You need a heap of technical son that size matters out here,” Legend ing to generate the targets over a large
targets and the technical expertise to managing director Mark Wilson said. area,” he said. “That means going out
rank them and even then, it still requires “If you haven’t got a big enough pack- away from the known into the unknown,
a huge amount of luck and serendipity. age to look regionally it is very hard and I think that is where the new discoveries
“The biggest impact on your own suc- expensive…actually it is not hard if you are coming from in the greenfields areas.
cess comes from narrowing down that have the money. It is expensive exploring Those that control the large land hold-
search space from large-scale, 100sq small packages.” ings in the new areas are going to be the
km targets, to 5-10sq km. That is the ones to dictate the strategic areas.”
scale the deposits sit at. But you need Coupled with a big physical presence
that big area to start with. We had that at is a big-picture mentality, according to
Yamarna, Sirius/IGO had it at Nova and Osborne, who credits his experience
De Grey has it in the Pilbara.” with Gold Fields Ltd as key to identifying
IGO has patiently put together JVs and the true scale of Gruyere.
other corporate deals in several prov- “I think big company experience is a
inces. Bradford said it was a deliberate real advantage. With a big company,
approach prompted by the company’s you’re exposed to big projects and taught
overall exploration philosophy. how to target and assess big projects
“It is about working out what terrains and understand what things need look-
we want to be in, then starting to look at ing at and the importance of good data
how we get a position on those belts,” he and good interpretation.
explained. “It is rare for an exploration “De Grey has done a fantastic job.
area to be open, so you can’t peg it. That Most of that exploration team came from
took us down the road of JVs.” AngloGold Ashanti and they have done a
Legend has carved out a sizeable po- very similar job to Gold Road; they took

Page 22 JULY 2020 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT