Ann: Response to ASX Query, page-36

Of course it matters. In any mining at whatever grade you need to eliminate waste into the ore stream. If you don't know where the boundary of the ore is you have no way of knowing where the ore finishes and the waste rock begins and you have no way of designing a mine for the ores most profitable economic extraction.

Your arguement is we have "sh%t" loads so let's throw caution to the wind on the method that we use to go about proving it.

For starters we can't be sure we have "sh#t" loads yet and pointing to the regional scale ocurences of this very unusual type of mineralisation between Juma, Ema and Tres Estados brings up more red flags for me personally than it gives me comfort. The drilling and mineralisation in the initial holes at Juma were in silica drenched zones within a rhyolite host, a different mineralising scenario and rock type to the gabbros we have at Tres Estados and Ema.

Juma and Ema are over 100km apart if my memory serves me correctly. Having this strange and unexplained "ionic" form of gold Pd -Pt and in some cases Sn mineralisation over such large distances and over different rock types just adds to the incredibility of the story in my mind. I'm not saying the prospects aren't capable of hosting a lot of metal, I'm saying let's try and measure it in ways that lend themselves to maximising its value and not waste money on unnecessary work.

My preferred approach would be to conduct another program of surface sampling at Tres Estados and Ema, taking and "assaying" individual samples from different locations. That would be a way of proving the prospect without the current expense of drilling.

If that program confirms the assumption that the metals are likely to be uniformly distributed in the gabbro than I'd be all behind a large scale program of drilling along the lines of my previous post. ie 2 or 3 well sampled holes.
Once all that confirms the possibility of the grades being uniformly disturbed I doubt there will be trouble raising money for a more comprehensive program of resource style drilling.

Eshmun