I'll try to address your points in the order that you have made them - so no - I didn't mention the few isolated high grade Cu and Au rock chip samples from surface because we don't know how representative they are. As for the high grade gold and copper rock chips - they sure are interesting but they are actually located outside of the blue coloured shear zone shown in Fig1 going from Mt Wheeler through Evening Star to Canteen and without exact sample locations for these 12 rock chip samples (they have just given us the location of the "New outcrop discovery" as a single point which looks to be located between Mt Freda proper and Canteen, most likely different strike and dip and geological host to the 1000-2000ppm Co shear zone they have interpreted.
The Cobalt grades reported in the recent Ausmex RC holes shown in Fig.1 are between 1000-2000ppm Co - similar to the historic Co grades in the QMC drilling as shown on Fig.1 - look closely at the diagram - they are reporting Co in ppm and in g/T on the same diagram - as I mentioned before - thats not very professional. Those sort of grades (without appreciable Au or Cu assays) are not economic and as other posters have pointed out - CDU with similar Co numbers have never activated their Co recovery circuit because at those levels the circuit requires more power and reagents than the value of the Co concentrate recovered.
Look closely at the cross section ESRC102 and 103 - what you are seeing there is a slight Co enrichement at surface in the weathering zone of between 500-1100ppm Co near surface (backed up by similar rock chip samples at surface) but what happens down dip in hole ESRC103? The Co numbers die off down to 324ppm Co and although the zone is quite interesting and encouraging from the copper and gold grade point of view its a similar story with the other ERC cross sections. As a matter of fact the Co assays are getting typically down to the level of Co seen in the Mt Freda QMC resource estimate, so these are no better than what has already been estimated at Mt Freda by QMC (which I will discuss later).
Your comments about the Mt Isa mine are completely irrelevant, as the Mt Freda area is in the Eastern Mt Isa fold belt which are different age and types of rocks to the Central and Western Mt Isa fold belts. Cobalt is everywhere where you have sufficient sulphur to form cobaltian pyrite and accessory pyrrotite - the trouble is how to economically extract it even if you have reasonable copper and gold type ore. There is no reference to black shales that I could find in the Mt Freda area and I'm not surprised, as the area is within the high metamorphic grade rocks of the Soldiers Cap Fm which are completely different from the black shales in the Mt Isa mine sequence, and are also very different from the shales at the Century Zinc mine. From what I can see they have a thin but reasonale gold deposit at Mt Freda itself and a bunch of interesting vein hosted copper and gold drill intersections in Amphibolite.
Here is a reputable paper about some of the variants of Cloncurry area Copper-Gold deposits that may help.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08120099808728403
Now I did actually look at some the previous AMG announcements with the stuff at the western end of Mt Freda in the Carpet to King Brown area and its all early days yet with limited RAB drilling and anomalous gold rock chip samples at surface but that just reinforces my point that they have enough good stories and stuff happening without desperate Cobalt spruiking ASX releases that hide their interesting and possibly decent copper and gold exploration prospects.
I'm a little bit familliar with Diversified Resources and it was no surprise that the low gold prices got them in the late 1980s, plus the fact that the stripping ratios in the pit made it all the more difficult, so yes, Diversified resources got in did their rape and pillage and picked up the easy tonnes and probably made a quick bit of cash in a completely different gold price environment, you only have to look at the typical Mt Freda cross sections to see that. As a matter of fact they've just made it more difficult to get some fast economic payback at Mt freda but thats ok as it seems like they may not have followed up along strike anyway...
I'm not sure of the status, location or grade of the oxide gold stockpile you are talking about but it sounds like a heap leach operation will have to be permitted and built.
You do know what a geological target is don't you? It just means that some geologist thinks that there is a possibility of a 1.5m ounce gold deposit somewhere in the region. Its a wild-ass guess without any supporting surface or drill hole data and definately is not a JORC compliant resource.
I still dismiss the 1 million pound figure from the QMN resource estimate because the Co grade is laughably low - almost background Co and the cost to construct and extract the Co would far exceed the value of the contained Co, its a barely economic gold deposit as it is without saddling it with the complexity and costs of trying to extract Co.
The SAM target northwest of Mt Freda is what got my attention and is quite encouraging and it would have been nice (but expensive) to continue the SAM survey along that trend towards Carpet and King Brown.
There is no doubt that a lot of test work and very old infrastructure will need to be replaced/upgraded at Gilded Rose and/or Mt Freda not to mention somewhere to put all the water that has acumulated in the Mt Freda open pit.
I just with they'd stick to exploration on their gold and their copper-gold stuff and don't try to spin things as the Co discovery of the century just because Cobalt is a bit trendy right now.
Look - it really is the old CDU crew reborn here - and I actually like Matt and Wayne, and could think of nothing more fun than going out in the bush with them hitting rocks and doing some prospecting and early stage exploration, its what they are best at, and I would even be prepared to have a little flutter and buy some AMG shares just for the exploration upside but you have to understand that even though I have some expertise in the area I would still treat it as a very highly speculative (but potentially fun) venture, and if people don't have a good understanding of geology and all the different Cloncurry style orebodies and all the different exploration techniques then they can potentially come a "cropper" if exploration throws up some spectacular drill intersections and then daytraders pile in... remind you of another Cloncurry based exploration outfit a few years ago?
