Ashburton

ASHBURTON COPPER GOLD BASE METALS PROJECT

LOCATION AND ACCESS

The Ash­bur­ton Project is located approx­i­mately 60 kilo­me­tres south of the Nanutarra-Paraburdoo road on Wyloo and Kooline Sta­tions in the Ash­bur­ton Min­eral Field, of West­ern Aus­tralia. The cen­tre of the project is approx­i­mately 185 kilo­me­tres from Parabur­doo and 100 kilo­me­tres from Nanu­tarra. The Project area encom­passes the Kooline Silver/Lead work­ings and the Kooline Gold, Kooline North, True Grit, Dook, and Sunken Trea­sure gold prospects (Fig­ure 6).

TENURE

Athena’s Ash­bur­ton Project cov­ers approx­i­mately 630 square kilo­me­tres and con­sists of one Min­ing Lease(M08/189) 90%, three 100% owned granted Explo­ration Licences (EL08/1641, EL08/1679 and EL08/1680) and an Explo­ration Licence appli­ca­tion (E08/1956) and a Prospect­ing License (P08/493) 95%.

PROJECT GEOLOGY AND MINERALISATION

Athena’s Ash­bur­ton Project takes in known gold prospects at Lewis’, Kooline North, True Grit, Dook, and Sunken Trea­sure, and silver/lead at the Kooline work­ings. A num­ber of these occur­rences are evi­dent as anom­alous responses in the regional grav­ity and mag­netic data sets. Pre­vi­ous work has largely been con­fined to sur­face geo­chem­istry and prospect­ing along the access cor­ri­dors with lim­ited follow-up drill test­ing. The West­ern Aus­tralian Geo­log­i­cal Survey’s regional sam­pling pro­gramme has iden­ti­fied geo­chem­i­cal anom­alies from that war­rant fol­lowup testing.

The Company’s ten­e­ments cover rocks of the Ash­bur­ton and Capri­corn for­ma­tions of the Wyloo Group along the north­ern mar­gin of the west Bange­mall Basin. Area selec­tion was dri­ven by stud­ies of the regional geo­physics which indi­cate a num­ber of ele­ments con­ducive to the for­ma­tion of large min­eral sys­tems. The com­bi­na­tion of granitic intru­sions, folds and thrust faults is of par­tic­u­lar inter­est as these pro­vide a source of heat and the struc­tures to focus and trap min­er­al­is­ing fluids.

The region is rea­son­ably remote and rugged and Athena?s ten­e­ments have been only lightly explored. Con­cep­tual tar­gets include large oro­genic mesother­mal saddle-reef and stock-work style gold/base metal deposits com­pa­ra­ble to Bendigo and Bal­larat in Vic­to­ria, Enter­prise at Pine Creek in the North­ern Ter­ri­tory and Telfer in West­ern Aus­tralia. The Ash­bur­ton dis­trict was the site of some of ear­li­est gold dis­cov­er­ies recorded in West­ern Aus­tralia but was soon over­looked as dis­cov­er­ies were made at South­ern Cross and Cool­gar­die.
Gold Prospects

The Kooline North gold anom­aly (Fig­ure 6 and 7) is located 17 kilo­me­tres north­west of the Lewis’ gold anom­aly. This prospect con­sists of coin­ci­dent gold and cop­per, ura­nium, zinc, anti­mony, and tung­sten anom­alies that can be traced in out­crop for over 3 kilo­me­tres, which have never been drill tested. The peak anom­aly is 800 metres long by 200 metres wide within a broader 2.5 kilo­me­tre long zone. The geo­chem­i­cal trends are coin­ci­dent with out­crop­ping altered lithic greywackes that are cut by gos­sanous quartz vein stock­works with pyrite alter­ation on the vein mar­gins. The Kooline North soil geo­chem­i­cal anom­aly is open to the north and the west where shal­low allu­vium cov­ers the host unit.

Athena inter­prets the Collins Bore gold min­er­al­i­sa­tion to be the east­ern exten­sion of the Kooline North gold anom­aly where six prospects on two min­er­alised trends have been iden­ti­fied. These trends are inter­preted as being on oppo­site limbs of east-west ori­en­tated folded sand­stone and shale units. Three of the six prospects (True Grit, Sunken Trea­sure and Dook) have been par­tially tested by reverse cir­cu­la­tion (RC) drilling. Aber­foyle Resources Lim­ited (1991–92) drilled 26 holes for 992 metres and Gold­fields Explo­ration Pty Ltd (1999) drilled 19 holes for 2203 metres.

Aber­foyle inter­sected 2 metres at 13.2 g/t gold in RC hole RCST03 at Sunken Trea­sure and Gold­fields inter­sected 3 metres at 15.6g/t gold in drill hole DKRC06 (Fig­ure 9). Other inter­sec­tions of inter­est include 5 metres at 2.7 g/t and 2 metres at 3.9 g/t gold. Drilling results over 0.5g/t gold are listed in Table 1.

Bull­dozer trench­ing by Aber­foyle in 1991 demon­strated that the gold min­er­al­i­sa­tion is hosted by quartz vein stock-worked aren­ites and coarse grits with silica-pyritemuscovite alter­ation on the vein mar­gins. The sur­face geo­chem­istry has mapped min­er­al­i­sa­tion on the north­ern zone for over 12 kilo­me­tres. Such an aeri­ally exten­sive anom­aly pro­vides an excit­ing tar­get for zones of eco­nomic gold mineralisation.

At Lewis’ gold prospect (Fig­ure 6), located 1.7 kilo­me­tres north of the silver-lead mines, Athena has iden­ti­fied an exten­sive strong gold-copper anom­aly using con­ven­tional soil sam­pling tech­niques. The anom­aly was later extended and enhanced using auger sam­pling which returned a max­i­mum gold assay of 496ppb. The gold anom­aly exceeds 1500 metres in length and is open along strike in both the east­erly and west­erly direc­tions. A Gra­di­ent Array Induced Polar­i­sa­tion (IP) sur­vey over the geo­chem­i­cal anom­aly mapped coin­ci­dent resis­tiv­ity and charge­abil­ity anom­alies within the 25ppb gold con­tour. The loca­tion of the coin­ci­dent charge­abil­ity and resis­tiv­ity anom­al­ism sug­gests that the response is due to quartz-hosted sul­phides in lithic-sandstones with pyritic alter­ation that are evi­dent in out­crop at this prospect.

Fig­ure 6

Athena plans to use mod­ern explo­ration meth­ods to map the struc­tures and alter­ation for sub­se­quent drill test­ing. Athena is con­fi­dent this approach can be used suc­cess­fully to locate high-grade gold resources in the Kooline area.
Silver/ Lead Prospects

Athena car­ried out exten­sive rock chip sam­pling pro­grams aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing and char­ac­ter­is­ing sil­ver­lead min­er­al­i­sa­tion at Kooline. A sam­ple of silver-lead con­cen­trate found on site at June Audrey assayed 210g/t sil­ver and 72% lead.

Three his­toric mines the Gift, June Audrey and Bil­rose were respon­si­ble for about 60% of the pro­duc­tion the Kooline silver-lead field in the 1950’s. Each of these three mines had its own treat­ment plant con­sist­ing of a bat­tery or crusher and a concentrator..

The Gift was mined to a depth of 52 metres and stoped over a strike length of 95 metres. The Bil­rose work­ings extend for about 110 metres and were mined to a depth of approx­i­mately 25 metres. At June Audrey two zones of work­ings extend for over 180 metres at sur­face and the main shaft is 41 metres deep. The lead sul­phide ore zones at the three prospects aver­aged approx­i­mately 2 metres in width. His­tor­i­cally the Kooline mines aver­aged 20% lead and 200g/t silver.

1.4 WORK COMPLETED BY ATHENA

In August 2009 Athena com­pleted a reverse cir­cu­la­tion drilling pro­gram at Kooline in the Ashburton.The pro­gram was designed to test a num­ber of geo­log­i­cal and geo­phys­i­cal tar­gets around the his­toric Kooline lead mines. The ini­tial pro­gram con­sisted of thir­teen holes for a total of 1150 metres. Three holes tested tar­gets at Lewis’ gold prospect and ten holes tested tar­gets asso­ci­ated with the his­toric lead workings.

Athena is par­tic­u­larly pleased with the gold assays of the drilling at Lewis’. The best results were 2 metres at 9.47g/t gold from 77 metres in drill hole AK09RC12(Figure 8) and 1 metre at 4.73g/t gold from 52 metres in drill hole AK09RC11. These two holes tested the same min­er­alised quartz vein array on sec­tions 160 metres apart. A third hole (AK09RC13) drilled 160 metres fur­ther to the west on the same struc­ture inter­sected a 30 metre wide zone of intense silica-mica +/- pyrite alter­ation from 60 metres down hole. The best result to date from AK09RC13 was 1 metre at 0.19g/t gold from 71 metres down hole. The three holes AK09RC11 to AK09RC13 have par­tially tested 360 metres of a 1.5 kilo­me­tre long gold soil and gra­di­ent array IP anom­aly. As a first pass test the results from this ini­tial drilling at Lewis’ are very encouraging.

The best results from Athena’s drilling at the Kooline lead work­ings were 6 metres at 1.85% lead and 4.92g/t sil­ver from 63 metres in drill hole AK09RC01, and 2 metres at 1.19% lead from 31 metres in drill hole AK09RC04. A 1 metre inter­sec­tion from 25 metres in hole AK09RC04 assay­ing 3.87g/t gold was un-expected as pre­vi­ous rock chip sam­pling around the lead work­ings had not returned any sig­nif­i­cant gold assays.

Three holes (AK09RC01, AK09RC09 and AK09RC10) tar­geted dipole-dipole IP anom­alies, of these only AK09RC01 is regarded as hav­ing reached the tar­get and even then the tenor of the min­er­al­i­sa­tion inter­sected in this hole does not ade­quately explain the geo­phys­i­cal response. A com­bi­na­tion of topo­graphic and her­itage con­straints placed restric­tions on the posi­tion­ing of AK09RC09 and AK09RC10, and these holes have not effec­tively tested their respec­tive targets.

While the results from the drilling at the lead work­ings have not met the Company’s expec­ta­tions fur­ther drill test­ing of the area is war­ranted. Athena’s drilling is the first time that either the lead work­ings or Lewis’ have been drill tested.

More exten­sive geo­phys­i­cal sur­veys over the remain­ing tar­gets and addi­tional drilling will be imple­mented based on the results of this pro­gram. The exten­sive Gift and Bil­rose work­ings have not yet been tested by IP sur­vey­ing and have had only rudi­men­tary drill test­ing.
Forward-looking Statements

This doc­u­ment con­tains forward-looking state­ments con­cern­ing Athena’s Projects that, despite being based on Athena’s cur­rent expec­ta­tions about future events, are sub­ject to risks and uncer­tain­ties out­side the con­trol of Athena and its Direc­tors. Forward-looking state­ments are not based on his­tor­i­cal fact, and actual events or results may dif­fer mate­ri­ally from those described in the forward-looking state­ments as a result of a vari­ety of risks, uncer­tain­ties and assumptions.

The poten­tial qual­ity and grade of the untested areas of the Byro and Ash­bur­ton projects are con­cep­tual in nature and there has been insuf­fi­cient explo­ration to define Min­eral Resources at these projects and it is uncer­tain if fur­ther explo­ration will result in the deter­mi­na­tion of a Min­eral Resource.
Com­pe­tent Per­sons Statement

The tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion relat­ing to Athena’s explo­ration projects was com­piled by Mr Mar­tin Dormer, an employee of Ishine Inter­na­tional Resources Lim­ited. Mr Dormer is a Mem­ber of the Aus­tralasian Insti­tute of Min­ing and Met­al­lurgy, and has suf­fi­cient rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence in the styles of min­er­al­i­sa­tion and deposit styles under con­sid­er­a­tion to qual­ify as a Com­pe­tent Per­son as defined in “The Aus­tralasian Code for Report­ing of Explo­ration Results, Min­eral Resources and Ore Reserves (JORC Code, 2004 edi­tion)”. Mr Dormer con­sents to this inclu­sion of the infor­ma­tion in this report in the con­text and for­mat in which it appears.