Davyhurst Gold Project

The Davyhurst Gold Project is located approximately 120km north-west of Kalgoorlie, and is a core component of Monarch’s consolidated gold resource base in the Northeastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Historically, the Davyhurst field has produced some 1.15 million ounces of gold since 1897.

Monarch acquired the Davyhurst Project in November 2005, comprising an 808,000 ounce resource base, 841km2 tenement package, a 1.2 million tonne per year gold processing facility, administration offices, an accommodation village and associated infrastructure.

In early 2006, Monarch further expanded its position at Davyhurst through a merger with Siberia Mining Corporation. This merger resulted in the strategic consolidation of the nearby Siberia and Ida Gold Camp deposits into Monarch’s existing holding, establishing a consolidated project with a combined resource base of 2 million ounces of gold within a 2,000 sq km tenement package including a centrally located gold treatment facility and production infrastructure. Monarch is now the largest Australian-controlled ground holder in the Kalgoorlie region.

The Project which is located within the prolific Davyhurst-Mt Ida greenstone belt, has significant exploration potential. This belt hosts two major geological structures, the Zuleika Shear and the Mt Ida Fault, which have a close association with gold mineralisation in the region and reportedly control a 10 million ounce gold endowment. 80% of past drilling in the area was completed to depths of less than 50 metres and was generally only focused on known deposits within a limited geological assessment.

Current Operations

Monarch has commenced intensive exploration drilling programs at Davyhurst designed to further increase the existing 1.5 million ounce resource inventory. This programme includes 60,000 metres of RAB drilling and 44,000 metres of RC drilling.

As part of this program, specialist geological consultants, SRK Consulting, completed a structural review and interpretation of the combined exploration database for the Davyhurst Project, establishing a comprehensive exploration framework and outlining key exploration targets. As an adjunct to the SRK report, Aster imagery for the site was purchased and a complete regolith map developed to aid in interpretation of the geochemical anomalies.  

Aerial magnetics were re-flown over extensive areas of the tenements in order to improve the coverage and clarity of magnetic imaging, as well as processing the existing data. In addition, aerial photography over the leases was completed and integrated into the exploration database. An extensive programme of verification and integration of the data from the Davyhurst and Siberia geological databases into a single GIS database was conducted and will continue into the next year. Integration of the databases has allowed an appraisal of all previous drilling aand other geophysical data producing further targets for future exploration.

Mining commenced at Davyhurst during June 2007, with first gold pour in August 2007.

Key Exploration Targets

Round Dam Trend

Recent exploration RC drilling on the Round Dam trend, a gold-mineralised corridor extending over 15kms from the Lady Eileen prospect in the north to the Salmon Gums prospect in the south, has recorded excellent results. The Round Dam trend is located only 4kms from the Davyhurst mill at its northern extent.

These results show extensions to gold resources at Federal Flag (9m @ 3.47g/t Au, 11m @ 2.28g/t Au, 15m @ 2.21g/t Au) and Walhalla (26m @ 1.31g/t Au, 5m @ 10.51g/t Au, 3m @ 8.12g/t Au), which may result in enhancing pit designs and gold production. The potential for new resource discoveries at the Walhalla North prospect, (6m @ 19.21g/t Au, 5m @ 6.11g/t Au) and Macedon to Mt Banjo prospects (6m @ 2.85g/t Au, 3m @ 27.86g/t Au, 10m @ 1.89g/t Au) has been confirmed by recent drilling.

Historically exploration over the 15kms of the Round Dam trend has been confined to shallow, wide spaced RAB drilling which leaves the potential for significant further discoveries, which is supported by this first round of exploration drilling.

The Davyhurst exploration budget for FY 2008 consists of a commitment to an extensive drilling programme targeting a combination of resource definition and regional drilling.

Targets have been generated from a comprehensive review of the in-house databases and target generation studies by external consultants and represent immediate drilling targets within the current exploration budget.