Turning its back on the lower grade Sheepshead and Deborah lines of reef, Bendigo Mining has now turned its attention to the Garden Gully line. "This quarter was a turning point for the company," Bendigo Gold chief executive officer, Rod Hanson, said "We have successfully redirected our exploration into the more prospective Garden Gully line, determined a better way of interpreting exploration data and delivered a solid operating result from the remaining available ore." The decision to change tack to focus on exploration followed a realisation that insufficient ore reserves existed in the previously-defined resource area to support economically-viable mining. In the company's March quarter report to the Australian Stock Exchange, Mr Hanson said it was "now making assessments of size and quality of mineralisation based on a combination of visual estimates, assays and our accumulated knowledge". "The reefs discovered so far at the Southern end of Garden Gully are modest in size, but are displaying an intensity of gold mineralisation which I believe is better than anything we have seen to date," he said.
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