Operations

The Whirling Dervish deposit is located 1km to the North of the Carosue Dam processing plant. The ore zone is of considerable width (25-30m) with grades above 2g/t. The open pit provides a low cost mill feed source in close proximity to the processing facilities.

Stage 1 of the Whirling Dervish pit was mined at the re-commencement of operations in early 2010. Mining of stage 2 of the Whirling Dervish pit will be concluded CY11, with options being considered for the third stage of the pit to be mined during 2012.

The current published resource at Whirling Dervish is 477koz, with an open-pit reserve of 146koz. Whirling Dervish is highly leveraged to the gold price, with significant increases to optimal pit shell sizes at higher gold prices. The current resource is open at depth and laterally and is only constrained by a lack of drilling.

An extensive resource extensional drilling program is scheduled for Whirling Dervish in FY12. This work will identify opportunities for additional open pit cutbacks as well as determining the underground potential of the deposit at depth.

Deep drilling at Whirling Dervish Pit