Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Outback Goldfields (CSE: OZ)(OTC: OZBKF) CEO Chris Donaldson on Exploring In the Hottest Gold Address in the World

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real at the 2021 Beaver Creek precious metal summit. I am here with the CEO of Outback Goldfields, Mr. Chris Donaldson, Chris, we shaking hands again?

Chris Donaldson: We're shaking hands. Good to see you Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: How in the heck are you? It's great to see you.

Chris Donaldson: I'm doing well. Doing well. It's certainly interesting times, but it's good to get back on the road and actually shake hands and see people again.

Gerardo Del Real: This is a new story to our audience and you and I have known each other for years. You do great work on the philanthropic side. I'm very fond of that, and you've done great work in the past with your prior company, but now you have a new role in a new company and you're exploring in one of the most exciting parts of the world to explore for gold. Can you tell us a bit about Outback Goldfields?

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I was almost 10 years at Western Copper and Gold up in the Yukon in Canada. This is quite a departure in October I came over to run Outback Goldfields, which is a exploration play in Victoria in and around the Fosterville mine. Of course, that area is getting a lot of attention right now because first of all, for the Fosterville mine, which is the highest grade lowest margin or highest margin mine in the world. Also there's a bunch of junior companies that are hitting the knock on the area's always been there's only one Fosterville, but now we're seeing snips that there, there may be multiple and they're they're experiencing what they're calling the second gold rush right now.

Gerardo Del Real: There's been some great success E79, Mawson Gold among others, right. You've hit some pretty nice high-grade numbers, obviously with COVID and the supply chain bottlenecks and everything that's going on. It's a really interesting time to be drilling, to be exploring. Can you walk me through what that looks like right now?

Chris Donaldson: Sure, sure. I mean, we were fortunate enough to do a good raise and had a good response and just at the end of last year, so we raised $11 million and put together a team in Australia. You have to have one in Australia and one in Vancouver, tough to travel there right now. But anyways, we have a full program slated. We have four properties, three of them are, are slated to have some exploration work this year. We were full of piss and vinegar. Then some of the lockdowns have slowed us down a little bit in the area, but those seem to be easing a little bit and we've been able to do quite a bit of work so far. So one of the properties, Glenfine, we did some initial drilling there was a historic mine there and then a new target, a couple of hundred meters away.

Chris Donaldson: We were just testing for continuity in between, and we had some good results in there and it looks like that's proved out. And now we're moving on to Yeungroon which is fairly exciting and it's indicative of what's happening in the area. So under explored, but there has been some historic drilling to a point where they would hit cover. So we're going in and around what the old golden jacket mine, which has had it historically drilled, what 250 grand per tonne, we're going to do a drill program to identify some targets, 300 holes. We've just poked the first few of probably 10 holes that we'll do right underneath the mine as well.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned the financing, walk me through the share structure and some of your big shareholders. Because you have a couple.

Chris Donaldson: We've got about 70 million shares that were out. We acquired these properties from an Australian listed company called Petrotherm. So we actually issued 33 million shares to them. It didn't go to them as a block and went to their shareholders in specie is what they call it. So I have a half of my shareholder base is Australian. The other is probably mostly based in Vancouver, but spread out all over. We're part of the inventor group, which is Craig Perry, who many of you may know Craig Perry from a number of other companies that he's part of. So they were the main kind of drivers and getting some of their followers and investors in. So well-financed we should be good for the next couple of years and we've got a program underway.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. You mentioned four assets. I believe it's over 1,100 hectares?

Chris Donaldson: Yeah. Quite a bit more than that. That's just one of the properties there. One of them was about 45,000 hectares, right. So, yeah, we've got a lot of projects and that's part of our challenge this year is really breaking that down. We're getting down to maybe four or five really key targets. That's what we're doing in what we're calling phase one. Then our phase two, which should start by the end of this year, we'll really be okay let's which are our horses, which we want to go with and, and really put some money into those key areas.

Gerardo Del Real: So you kind of answered it, but what comes next? What can investors expect here in the next couple of quarters?

Chris Donaldson: Yeah. So we're doing some soil sampling and so on, which can yield some results, but we do have a little bit of drilling at Yeungroon, which could be exciting. Right underneath the golden jacket mine, we will have some other results coming from the Glenfine, if they come up from the, if we finally get those assays, which we're supposed to get in the next couple of weeks, but I've been saying that for a month already now. So yeah, we're drill results. And then we'll be launching into our phase two, which will be more drilling. So hopefully ramp up to maybe two or three drills midway through next year.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Yeah. It's exciting times. Yeah. Pleasure to see you again.

Chris Donaldson: Good to see you. Thanks so much.

Gerardo Del Real: All right.