The Morning Star area lies within the Woods Point – Walhalla Synclinorium structural domain of the Melbourne zone, a northwest-trending belt of tightly folded Early Devonian Walhalla Group sandy turbidites. The domain is bounded by the Enoch’s Point and Howe’s Creek Faults, both possible detachmentrelated splay structures that may have controlled the intrusion of the Woods Point Dyke Swarm and provided the conduits for gold-bearing hydrothermal fluids. The local structural zone is referred to as the Ross Creek Shear Zone (RSZ).

Most gold mineralisation in the Woods Point to Gaffney’s Creek corridor occurs as structurally-controlled quartz ladder vein systems hosted by dioritic dyke bulges. The Morning Star Gold Mine exhibits all these characteristics.

The mine exhibits narrow quartz vein deposits hosted in a diorite dyke that is 700m long by 120m wide. The quartz veins are stacked and range up to 2m thick. The dyke has been mined to a depth of 920m with the dyke open at depth below 1,000 vertical metres.

Morning Star is a historic underground gold mine. AuStar Gold acquired Morning Star Gold NL (MCO) in 2015. At the time of the acquisition, the Morning Star mine had been fully refurbished to 10 level with numerous development drives rehabilitated in the upper levels for preliminary bulk sampling and trial mining activities.

Following the completion of a successful trial mining program in the first half of the financial year, AuStar recommencedmining and processing activities at Morning Star in March 2019.

Mining operations continued through the 2020 financial year from the McNally and Stones reefs. Mining operates as a rail and shaft operation, with airleg mining/drill and blast operations and movement of ore to surface via carting.

Throughout the year McNally Reef contributed the bulk of Morning Star production with development made more challenging by the reef developing down-dip towards the east of original intersection and development. This reef development resulted in longer and multiple staged haulage, up incline, to the Seven Level rail heading, impacting production volumes.

Recent geological work has identified a development opportunity to develop from Eight Level to Seven Level, providing for future production from McNally Reef to occur largely down incline. This development is expected to materially increase production from McNally within existing resources.

Mining continued in the Stones Reef throughout most of the 2020 via access and ore pass rises developed from Nine Level to Eight Level Sub. Mining from Stones has recently recommenced.

The AuStar Gold process plant at the Morning Star mine site utilizes standard gravity methods (enhanced by the installation in March 2019 of a high-speed centrifugal concentrator) to recover gold from the Company’s Morning Star and Rose of Denmark ores. Through the gravity process, the gold room captures approximately 65% to 75% of the gold directly to bullion, with an additional 15% of fine free gold residing in the middlings as concentrate and up to 10% of fine free gold in the gold room table rejects.

The material containing the fine free gold (concentrate) not captured directly into bullion at the Morning Star plant is to be treated by Gekko Systems offsite, with expected recoveries in these two fractions of approximately 95% of the contained gold.

A refining agreement to convert Gold dore to refined salable gold was agreed with CPG in Oakleigh, Victoria.

March 2019 also saw Austar gold reach an agreement with Gekko Systems to custom ........