Yes...it did rain and areas of Australia experienced signficant flooding to include areas in and around Beetalloo. Amounts of rain in that part of the world were significant and damaging for that area of Australia. While not significant relative to North American rain fall, for Australia quite damaging.

The issue is the rains delayed their ability to get equipment into the area during the mid-part of the year as scheduled and required as a component of their permits. That led to their request to expand/extend the "time" period for their three year exploration permit. This request was approved by the Northern Territory of Australia allowing them additional time to continue expanding wells and further testing. Talking directly to Falcon, they will not confirm nor deny that other "evaluation" of core (older samples) by potential JV partners has been ongoing nor will they confirm nor deny that other processes to include infrastructure and perhaps drilling have been moving forward in the past couple of months. The answer to questions has been "this is a very large deal with many parts. One conclusion then leads to other questions to answer."

Not sure this helps but they are required by their permits to do specific things in certain time frames. Because they received approval to "change" plans for 2010 does not mean they are not working toward making some of the 2010 schedule happen. However, it appears that most of the spending i.e. well expansion will likely occur in 2011.

KySkybolt