Ann: High Cobalt Grades Returned from Bungonia Project, page-22

Found it.....nothing to do with the NSW cobalt....but Mt. Venn .....



In 1970, the Mount Venn tenements were held by Tin Creek Mining Corporation who had not explored the site. A company called Tasminex bought a 60% interest in the lease, and began drilling. On January 27 1970, some of the directors from Tin Creek and Tasminex visited the site, and one of the directors panned some ore from a drill-hole. He was convinced he saw nickel, although the geologist present dismissed this idea. Nevertheless, the announcement that nickel had been found at Mount Venn was relayed back to company headquarters. It was the height of the nickel boom, with the pandemonium surrounding the Poseidon nickel discovery at Windarra near Laverton. It was a boom that was about to go bust.

The director carelessly told a business journalist that they had found nickel at Mount Venn which COULD be as big as the discovery at Poseidon. The shares in Tasminex rocketed from $3 to $96. The directors promptly sold their shares at a huge profit. After the discovery the report was false, the share price collapsed, a stockbroker went bankrupt as a result, and many shareholders had their fingers burnt. The resulting public outrage led the Tasmanian Government to launch an investigation, but no action was ever taken against the directors. Meanwhile the Mt Venn prospect was abandoned and forgotten about as a bad memory.

Thirty years later a company called Helix Resources took over the tenement and did some exploring. It is assumed nothing economic was discovered, as the area fails to get a mention (2013) on their website.

The prospect is 125 kilometres east of Laverton in the Cosmo Newbery Aboriginal Reserve, in the remote western Gibson Desert. A journalist who visited the site stated : '(Mt Venn can be) described as singularly unimpressive. It is a low lying hill covered with sand, small scuffy trees and saltbush. The arid soil is strewn with small lumps of rock. A few kangaroos and emus somehow eke out a living from the rough scrub'.