AXG - Antipodes Gold [formerly GEL - Glass Earth]

[elZorro]

Yes, should be an interesting day for GEL holders. I'm going to pay a lot more attention to any drilling and test site information that we have already been given. Maybe that's what GEL means when they say the market is fully informed. If new results are not substantially different, no need for a new press release. Similarly, the mining permit is not a licence to start mining at Gun Club, but no doubt they have been working on the ORC consents process in the background.

I trolled the internet and found these snippets about Muirs Reef:

The prospecting and exploration permits discussed in the previous section indicate
that these activities are primarily focused on potential gold deposits in the Bay of
Plenty. While there is no current gold production in the region, existing information
and the location of the nearby Martha Hill mine at Waihi suggest that this cannot be
discounted in the future. Figure 6 maps some areas of potential interest for gold and
silver deposits, identified using publicly available information. The map locates these
areas in the Western Bay of Plenty and Rotorua districts.

Areas of interest in the Western Bay of Plenty centre on known mineralised areas
with historical gold production. Information from Crown Minerals (2004) focuses on
two locations in particular and provides the following commentary:

(i) Muirs Reefs in the Te Puke area.
Two subparallel, north northeast striking auriferous quartz reefs. Worked intermittently from 1897 to 1928 from several adits and shafts with a production in excess of 1685 kg (54,172 oz) of bullion
from 64,482 tonnes of quartz. These reefs and their possible extensions and repetitions have been explored under various mineral licences and permits in more recent times. The area has good prospectivity and is potentially a future extraction site.

(ii) The Eliza Mine on the Waitekohe Stream in the ranges southwest of Katikati yielded only 150g bullion from 12 tonnes quartz earlier last century but remains a potential future extraction site. The known mineralisation is >400m long, several metres wide, and strikes 15° dipping steeply west.
While these remain potential areas of interest, other interpretations should also be taken into account. For example, Houghton and Cuthbertson (1989, p.31) acknowledge the Eliza Mine deposit, but conclude that the history of prospecting and mining in this part of the Kaimai Range has been singularly unsuccessful..


Gold and base metals
Stokes (1980: 276) recorded the history of gold prospecting in the Tauranga/Te Puke area. A small amount of rock was crushed at the Eliza claim, south of Katikati (Downey 1935: 254). Muir’s Reef, south of Te Puke, was a much more substantial effort, with a number of claims being made there and one substantial mining effort resulting, which operated from the late 1890s until 1928 (Downey 1935: 252; Taylor 1969: 123–134; Stokes 1980: 278–280)....

Muirs Reef, southwest of Te Puke, was the site of the Bay of Plenty's only commercial goldmine. It was operating around the 1920s, and the mining activity generated mail, resulting in the Muir's Reef Post Office being opened in July 1921. An accident in 1924 saw the mine being flooded, and the main pump destroyed. An attempt was made to keep the mine going, but rising costs, diminishing amounts of gold, and continuing water problems, the mine closed in 1928. Once this happened there was no further call for a post office, and it closed in February 1929.

I think I'd need to consult some books for more detailed information, but this does help. Using fairly basic equipment at the time, $54 million dollars worth of gold was recovered (today's trade value), and GEL thinks there is quite a bit more kicking around in the general area (but note the seams appear to be not very wide). If the above data is correct, the average grade was a little less than 1oz/tonne (a creditable 26g/tonne) for the quartz ore, for the two reefs that were mined. GEL has access to historical drill results giving up to 358g/tonne over a 1 metre interval. A little bit of that sort of ore would make up for a lot of lower grades.