Would You Try Opening A Gold Mine In Australia?

[GhostMiner]

   Just thought i'd start a post about mining in Australia and what it's like compared to California. As some of us know, California is not mining friendly. I've actually had people say to me "Oh no, you're not one of those people are you?" Sort of makes you feel like a second class citizen. So how is it for the miners in Ausralia?

[Norvic]

I suspect the answer is the same for the US, it depends what state your in. In West OZ, mining is the backbone of the economy  wheras in our other states it competes with other industries and thus does not have the $ relevance. 

[GhostMiner]

7 minutes ago, Norvic said:

I suspect the answer is the same for the US, it depends what state your in. In West OZ, mining is the backbone of the economy  wheras in our other states it competes with other industries and thus does not have the $ relevance. 

I'm curious about the permitting in Australia & how rigorous it is.

[Reg Wilson]

Well this is a coincidence. 

Back in the nineteen eighties a mate and I stumbled on some old alluvial workings up north from where I live here in Australia. It extended from shallow surfacing on a slope into an open cut lead running parallel with the slope. It was at a depth of about eight or nine feet and about a hundred meters in length from the surfacing. Although being quite overgrown with scrub we could see that it was well laid out with rock walls and wheelbarrow tracks where the wash was taken out to be treated in a long tom, the water being taken from a dam in a gully that had since been washed away at some time. There were still old rusty bits of equipment equipment laying about and it looked like the original miners just walked out and left it. 

Where the lead had been abandoned there was a short exploratory drive where some sort of animal appeared to have made its home and a small pile of wash was left next to the tunnel. Curiosity got the better of us so we took a sample of the wash in an old tub that we had found. We also discovered rusted out gold pans and the remains of their washing setup which had long since rotted away.

Back at camp by a waterhole we panned our wash. When I got down to the last bit in the pan I handed it to my mate and said "take a look at this". His mouth fell open and he looked at me wide eyed. We had about a two inch tail of fines and a few matchead 'pickers'. After panning all the wash that we had brought back we returned to the workings and scraped back to the the bedrock in the short tunnel which we found was following a small gutter. More fines and bits, some would have been detectable.

From what we could see no one seemed to have done any work here since the diggings had been abandoned. Why would anyone leave good colour like this here? There and then we decided that we would be mad not to peg this area, but decided to try and find out what we could about it before doing so. We had been told about an old chap that had prospected in this area most of his life, so set about finding him to see if he could enlighten us to the history of gold in this area. When we did finally find him he was very friendly and only too willing to share what he knew, which was quite a lot. His special interest was hard rock reef mining, however he knew quite a bit about alluvial deposits in the area. Old Harry as it turned out was related to the two Cornish brothers that worked the alluvial deposit. They were before his time but he did know a bit about them. There were four brothers, but the other two had no interest in mining and were farmers who struggled to make a living here in the hard country and moved to New Zealand. Harry had no idea what happened to them, but the other two worked that deposit for a couple of years before joining the army. They were very short of stature and were not immediately accepted, but applied again and on the second attempt were successful. Harry was not sure of their fate but after going off to fight in the first world war they did not return.

To be continued.

[Norvic]

I learnt many years back that taking out mining claims was a red tape time consuming pain in the butt, plus gave poachers an exact location to search, as I have not needed to go any further than simply detect for gold I ceased interest in mining claims and since only seek property owners permission in conjunction with whatever States prospecting permit/ license/rights and prospect leaving only footsteps. Our states have a nominal annual fee for such, although WA when I was last there a Miners Right was perpetual, a bonus I have found property owners are far more likely to give their permission if they know you are not likely to file claims and are not in the business of selling claims they too are tired of poachers,

GM this has worked for me for 40 plus years of serious part time gold detecting.

[geof_junk]

4 hours ago, Norvic said:

I learnt many years back that taking out mining claims was a red tape time consuming pain in the butt, plus gave poachers an exact location to search, as I have not needed to go any further than simply detect for gold I ceased interest in mining claims and since only seek property owners permission in conjunction with whatever States prospecting permit/ license/rights and prospect leaving only footsteps. Our states have a nominal annual fee for such, although WA when I was last there a Miners Right was perpetual, a bonus I have found property owners are far more likely to give their permission if they know you are not likely to file claims and are not in the business of selling claims they too are tired of poachers,

GM this has worked for me for 40 plus years of serious part time gold detecting.

Ditto........   Back in the early 1980s I took out a Claim as Norvic said I notified all the lazy detectorist were it was, because we had to put a public notice in the local paper. Before this the 4 corners of the pending claim had to have a peg with a application licence N° and date. Every thing that we did (hand tools) could be done with no claim (Miner's Right), or putting a bond down for restoration of the work which was refunded because we were good guys 😇 when the claim expired. The work we did was dig down nearly 2 ft. and work our way up the slope on bedrock. The size of the work was about 25 yd. by 15 yd. We used picks to break up the soil, and spread it out on a heavy duty tarp and detected it with the smallest coil we had. Once we had enough space behind us at the digging face we back filled by dragging the detected soil on the tarp and dumping it behind us all the way as we worked to the top of the slope until we reach exposed bedrock. Any tree that was in the dig area were left with their roots not disturbed. Not only all this could of been done without a claim we were burden with other constraints like fire equipment and water supply for it.

This was the ground before we worked it back in 1982. The guy in the second photo is is Carols brother who died back in 2004.

[Sheppo]

Red tape, red tape and more red tape. And fighting others for the same ground aswell as fence jumpers. And long, and I mean LONG wait times for approvals. I know of a lease that’s been pegged and still waiting for approval with the application being lodged in 2014. It varies state by state mainly, this is only the experience I have of my own state.

[madtuna]

Small scale push and detect is very viable in WA and is relatively cheap. 
Pegging a lease is cheap as chips, under $1000 for 200 hectare. Put in a POW which I’d imagine is the same as your POO.
 

Usually takes well under 12 months, but as stated, while it’s pending it’s advertised on Tengraph and open to every man and his dog. That is not really a problem as it’s also open to you and you’re going to push it anyway to get hopefully what’s out of reach of ma and pa hobbiest.

 

I am continually amazed at people buying PL’s on FB and gumtree for ridiculous prices ie: $15000+ and most of these go up for sale only a few weeks after being granted.

[Reg Wilson]

My mate Bill (not his real name) was very determined that we would get to work that lead, but there was much research to be done before that could come to fruition. Firstly the ground turned out to be privately owned and not Crown land as we first thought. The owner was a large pastoralist with a very dodgy reputation. He was known as a cattle and horse thief with some some powerful connections in local government and less than desirable friends. Our recent friend Harry advised us that this guy was one to be very careful of as he could not be trusted in any agreement that we may be involved in. How could we admit to him that we had tested material from the old mine site when we would have to admit that we had entered private property without his permission to do so? We would be revealing the fact that he had a potentially valuable gold source on a section of his property. It now looked like we faced a big problem.

After a very late night and the best part of a bottle of Bourbon we hatched a plot. There was an old reef mine, also on his property about four or five miles from the alluvial deposit. It was decided that to feel him out we would visit him and judge his reaction to having someone peg a mine on his property. We would intimate that the reef mine was of interest and we actually did some research on this mine and found that it was very rich but the water table beat them at a relatively shallow depth. We figured that we would be able to gauge his response to mining without giving away the site that we were really interested in.

Our meeting with the landowner who we shall call 'Lefty' began quite well as he insisted that we drink beer with him and threw some meat on the barbecue that he proudly told us that he had killed himself. He was most inquisitive as to why we requested a meeting with him, and his eyes narrowed when we began to outline our mining interest. Had we been to the mine? How did we know of it? What made us think that we could find gold there when it had not been worked for about a hundred years? How much gold did we think could be recovered? What percentage could he expect to receive?

It did not take long for us to realize that Harry was right about his analysis of Lefty. This bloke was a real shifty, greedy bit of work. We had an overpowering feeling that he would never be able to be trusted, regardless of what he may say. We discussed with Harry the possibility of doing business with Lefty and we had another meeting to get down to the facts of just how a lease on his property would go down. He stated that he would need a compensation and fifty percent of the gold recovered. He would also require that his son work with us to assure that we did not cheat him on the amount of gold recovered. He also required a copy of the work plan with recovery mapping and the right to terminate the lease at his discretion. Warning bells began to be deafening.

to be continued.

[rvpopeye]

DING DING DING DING !🤨