Regional Exploration Program
MCO believes there are also substantially under-explored areas on its current tenements including high-production old mines and dykes, many of which produced high grade gold only above the water table as historically, sub-water table level mining was hampered by lack of power to run pumps.
Running concurrently with the underground drilling at the Morning Star mine ‘Gap Zone’ project is MCO’s Regional Exploration Program (REP). The REP gained a significant boost in 2010 with the $4.5M JV announced with Ample Rise of Hong Kong. The REP will endeavour to establish an exploration resource target in the surrounding old mines and under-explored dykes contained within existing Morning Star's 5 granted Mining and Exploration Licences, 3 of which are held 100% by Morning Star Gold (those being MIN 5009, ELs 5079 & 4320) and 2 of which (MINs 5241 & 5299) are being farmed into by Ample Rise Investments. MCO's new mining partners are an investment group from mainland China with large gold aspirations. They will spend $4.5M to eventually acquire 51% of the two MINs with Morning Star operating and managing the JV.
MCO has systematically re-surveyed, mapped and 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 grade, from shallow workings (around 100 metres deep) mainly above the water table, such as ‘The Comet’, ‘Little Comet’, ‘All Nations’, 'Waverly', 'Tingha', ‘Mountaineer’ 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 closure in 1963.
MCO’s key regional targets include aforementioned mines and dykes such as the ‘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 but also rich in Platinoids). MCO plans to test the depth of these dykes and the presence of deeper quartz reefs through deep diamond drilling over 2010-13. All targets within the REP are being added to the Company’s 3D modelling as they are surveyed, sampled and ultimately drilled.
The Regional Exploration Program was conceived in 2008 and is aimed at establishing a greater overall gold endowment from these surrounding unexplored dykes, which are all contained within the Company’s existing Mining Licences that adjoin the Morning Star Mining Licence.
*** Tenements held by Morning Star Gold NL expanded tenfold in the past 2 years from ~20km2 to ~220km2. ***
Morning Star Gold currently has granted Mining & Exploration Licences covering over 200km2 of highly prospective Woods Point Dyke Swarm tenements. This is a huge increase (over tenfold) in Morning Star's areas over the previous years. The tenements cover the three major 'shear zones' running northwest from Woods Point. These zones run along the Ross Creek Line, the All Nations Line and the Waverly & Tingha line of dykes and workings. Many mines exist within these Mining Licences and Eexploration Licences, some of which were mined for rich returns of Gold from shallow workings historically.
Additionally Morning Star has a northern Mining Licence at Gaffney's Creek (MIN 5299) known as the 'Dempsey Licence'. This Mining Licence contains the historically rich Dempsey, Hunts and Rose of Shamrock Mines which have produced ~87,000ozs Au - some recently.
MCO Mining Titles can be found in this PDF:
MCO's Tenements as at 2010 (270.92 Kb)
