The Bellevue Project is located within the Agnew-Wiluna portion of the Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone belt, approximately 40 km NNW of Leinster. The project area comprises felsic to intermediate volcanic sequences, meta-sediments, ultramafic komatiite flows, Jones Creek Conglomerates and tholeiitic meta basalts (Mt Goode Basalt) which hosts the known gold deposits.

The major gold deposits in the area lie on or adjacent to north-northwest trending fault zones.

The Bellevue gold deposit is hosted by the partly tholeiitic meta-basalts of the Mount Goode Basalts in an area of faulting, shearing and dilation to form a shear hosted lode style quartz/basalt breccia.

Gold mineralisation in the area is structurally controlled and is generally associated with north-northwest striking and west dipping shear zones (dipping from 900 to 450), of 1 to 20 metre thickness. The exceptions are the Viago Lode, which is a low angle shear zone between 300 and 500 metres below surface which gently plunges to the south, and the Westralia and Vanguard lodes, which dip 450 to the north-east.

The majority of the Ore Reserves (>98% of Ore Reserve metal) are planned to be mined using conventional underground methods. The remainder of the Ore Reserves are planned to be extracted using conventional open pit mining methods on the near-surface portions of the Tribune and Vanguard lodes. A third open pit system, Hamilton/Henderson/Bellevue, is included in the LOM project plan.

The open pits are planned to be mined using a conventional diesel fleet of 120 t excavators and 90 t trucks. A smallest mining unit (SMU) modification process was carried out on the relevant Mineral Resources to ensure realistic modifying factors were applied to the forecast ore production. A minimum SMU of 3 m (2 m minimum mining width with 0.5 m dilution on each HW and FW contact) was applied, having regard for the fleet type and orebody spatial characteristics.

The Feasibility Study contemplates mainly underground mining and four small open pits. Detailed underground mine designs were then carried out on the deposit incorporating the optimisation results, and these were used as the basis of the Ore Reserve estimate. Modifying factors were applied to the design and a mine plan was subsequently scheduled. All Ore Reserve material is planned to be mined using underground methods. The underground mining methods used to estimate the Ore Reserve were applied based on the spatial characteristics of the lodes.

For the sub-vertical lodes (Deacon, Tribune, Tribune North, ........

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A life of mine water balance was created incorporating the hydrogeological model dewatering results, rainfall, evaporation, process water demand, Tailings Storage Facility returns, and the available storage in nearby pits. The water balance indicates that the dewatering will be very close to supplying the total demand for the operation required over the life of the mine, and the current stored water in the pits is likely to provide a large enough buffer to prevent a water deficit.

Hypersaline groundwater is a non-contested resource, unsuitable for any other beneficial use and represents approximately 90% of all water consumed onsite over the LOM.

A fresh water supply has been defined eight kilometres to north of the processing plant. Water will be supplied to the village, mine administration area domestic uses, and to the process plant (primarily for elution circuit use).

Bellevue has designed a water balance to maximise re-use of water throughout the plant with limited water loss (mainly through evaporation). The water will be sourced from underground dewater stored in unused open pits – which will not affect the local supply of potable water or livestock water. The water used by the operation is predominantly hypersaline and the plant has been designed to operate with this water quality, and there are no other stakeholders with a use for this hypersaline water resource. Over 90% of water used is from hypersaline underground water (which is an uncontested resource). No water will be discharged to the environment. Bellevue is forecast to be a low-water consumption mine, at ~0.6 m3 of water consumed per tonne processed - which is leading-practice.