In a new June 2023 ‘on the ground’ interview, Andrew Scott talks to Andrew Haythorpe and Adam Jones about the exploration programme. Adam covers his schedule, boots on the ground at Hurricane (5-7 days) meeting the previous owner, and he will then be at Lolworth for the rest of June taking rock chips and sampling where the tantalum & niobium and rare earths were discovered last year. Andrew Haythorpe talks about the bigger picture for Lolworth in the back yard of Charters Towers, Pajingo etc, looks at the 1980s results, how the area is so unexplored and why the results, size and scale of the area offers so much potential. Both believe that very little would be needed to put the Lolworth discoveries on the scale of Charters Towers, given the 10km ridgeline, the specific area of interest 3.5 x 4km (12-20sq km), but there is also an overlap in the SE of the tenement with the same geology, which is totally untested, which could be 3x the size of the current ridgeline. Adam and Andrew then discuss the planning for Hurricane, putting in access tracks to the breccia veins with bulldozers and an initial RC drilling plan. Andrew explains how the current private landowners have been unable to exploit the asset, and how ECR are the first company with significant resources to get on the ground there.
Moving to Creswick, Adam touches on the underwhelming initial results, but points to the fact there is a 10k trend that remains to be tested, and the reasons why ECR has to work smarter. Adam looks at the geology of nearby Ballarat compared to Creswick – similar structure, narrow vein, anticlines etc, with some 30 veins already identified along the 10k strike. In summary, Andrew highlights the work Adam and the team have done with soil geochemistry and sampling and how they are ‘ranking’ the prospects to get the biggest bang for the ECR buck. In summary, the ECR team are are here to find good grades. Lolworth has some ‘smoking’ mineralisation and Andrew believes at Hurricane will deliver at 20-40-60m below surface, in other words a classicAustralian open cut mining start up which gives ECR a chance to play the big game.
