Interview with James Gurry, Managing Director & Jozef Story, Exploration Manager of Aureka GoldRecording date: 11th August 2026Aureka (ASX:AKA) is an ASX-listed gold explorer and near-term developer operating a cluster of projects across Victoria's Stawell Corridor and St Arnaud goldfield, all within a 45-minute to one-hour drive of one another. The company was reconstituted from a distressed tenement package that Managing Director James Gurry acquired for under $1 million in 2023, ...
Interview with James Gurry, Managing Director & Jozef Story, Exploration Manager of Aureka Gold
Recording date: 11th August 2026
Aureka (ASX:AKA) is an ASX-listed gold explorer and near-term developer operating a cluster of projects across Victoria's Stawell Corridor and St Arnaud goldfield, all within a 45-minute to one-hour drive of one another. The company was reconstituted from a distressed tenement package that Managing Director James Gurry acquired for under $1 million in 2023, when gold prices were depressed, and relisted on the ASX at the end of 2024. Since the start of 2025, Aureka has drilled continuously and lifted its JORC resource base by 50%.
The company's flagship asset is the 100%-owned Irvine Gold Project, which sits 16km from the Stawell Gold Mine, a roughly 5-million-ounce historical producer. Irvine currently hosts an inferred resource of 398,300 ounces at 2.59 g/t gold, following a 94,000-ounce, 36% increase to the Resolution lode announced on 18 June 2026. That increase was driven by a reinterpreted structural and geological model, led by Exploration Manager Jozef Story, that defined 11 new geological domains around the deposit. Beyond the current resource, Aureka carries Advanced and Conceptual Exploration Targets that, combined with the unchanged Adventure lode target, exceed 600,000 ounces. Recent drilling identified a high-grade structure the company calls the Tenacity Fault, which returned the project's best assay to date: 10m at 12.1 g/t gold from 413m, including 0.3m at 183 g/t gold.
Rather than pursue Irvine's larger development in isolation, Aureka's near-term strategy centres on the brownfield Comstock project near St Arnaud, roughly 70km from Irvine, within a historic goldfield that produced approximately 400,000 ounces at 15 g/t. Comstock hosts a 56,500-ounce inferred resource at 1.21 g/t gold and 2.14 g/t silver, plus a 112,000 to 116,000-ounce exploration target. The company has signed a toll milling agreement with the nearby Wedderburn mill, described by management as project-agnostic and therefore usable for Irvine ore in future, and has submitted a production licence application for Comstock, targeting first ore movement within roughly 12 months. Management is guiding to first-year Comstock production of 3,000 to 7,000 ounces, an estimated A$30 million to A$50 million in revenue at current gold prices, and a targeted margin of around 50%.
The stated strategy is to use Comstock's free cash flow to fund ongoing exploration at Irvine without relying primarily on dilutive capital raises, while pursuing Irvine toward a longer-term development decision that management estimates is roughly three years from a first mining licence. Aureka currently has no debt and two diamond rigs active, one on each project. Management points to valuation support from the tenement package's prior history: the same assets, under a previous owner, traded up to approximately $150 million in market capitalisation in 2020, at roughly half today's gold price, against Aureka's current market capitalisation of under $20 million. Key near-term catalysts include Comstock's production licence approval and further assay results from the Tenacity Fault and Walker zone drilling programmes.
Learn more: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/navarre-minerals
Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com
