Mt Boppy Gold Project

History - Gold production from underground mining operations at Mt Boppy commenced in 1901 and continued until 1923. In its day the mine was one of the largest gold producers in Australia. The orebody delivered some 417 000 ounces of gold from ore with a notional grade of 15g/t gold (12.2g/t gold recovered). Sporadic operations up to 2002 added a further 7 000 ounces of gold production. This included gold recovered from the first Carbon-In-Pulp (CIP) plant built in Australia in 1975 at Mount Boppy to re-treat the historic tailings.

Current - Manuka Resources Limited (MKR) is developing the Mt Boppy gold mine 43 km east of Cobar, in the Central West region of New South Wales. The Mt Boppy mine (which is held by Mt Boppy Resources Pty Ltd) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Manuka Resources Limited. The current Mt Boppy resource is some 368,000 tonnes of gold ore contained in a mix of oxidised, transitional/fresh ores and historic stopping sands. Approximately 60,000 tonnes of gold ore stockpiles are also present on the surface at the Mt Boppy ROM.

Development - The Mt Boppy ore will be hauled on side-tipping road trains to the Wonawinta processing plant, a distance of approximately 150km of which 122km are on sealed local highways.  MKR will utilise and supervise contract mining and haulage operations at Mt Boppy, and process the ore at the Wonawinta plant with company employees.  Post-near-term mining the Mt Boppy site will be progressed as an advanced exploration project for underground resources on the mining leases together with extensive fieldwork on the surrounding exploration lease.

Geology

Mount Boppy is hosted within Devonian-age sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Canbelego-Mineral Hill Rift Zone. Mineralisation occurs largely in brecciated and silicified fine-grained sediments of the Baledmund Formation, within and adjacent to a faulted contact with older Girilambone Group sedimentary rocks. Lodes strike approximately north-south and dip steeply west, although the widest zone of mineralisation is related to slightly shallower dips. Gold mineralisation is fine-grained and commonly associated with coarse-grained iron-rich sphalerite.

Figure 1  Existing open cut to 205RL - new design down to 165RL