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Tuesday 27 March 2018
Transcontinental Hotel, 482 George St, Brisbane – 5:15 pm for 6:00 pm.
Meet in Balcony at the rear of the venue. RSVP not required.
The Transcontinental is directly opposite the Roma Street Station
The “Central” area of the Charters Towers Goldfield, located in NE Queensland, Australia, was once an extraordinarily high-grade gold mine which, for over 20 years after discovery quickly developed into one of the richest gold producing areas of the world. So far, a total of over 7 million ounces of gold has been recovered from the field since 1872. The phenomenal gold grades and reported annual productions were frequently over 4 ounces per tonne and sometimes over 8 ounces per tonne. Why hasn’t mining continued and why has the mining that has taken place been mostly unprofitable?
The style of mineralisation not only accounted for the success of the field but was also one of the main factors leading to its demise in ca.1917. Since 1917, many companies including Western Mining, Homestake-BHP, Normandy-Mt Leyshon and CRA have all attempted to revive gold mining in the area, however, the traditional exploration and reserve targeting techniques were met with very little success. Citigold (incl. Charters Towers Gold) is the only company to have “successfully” operated both open pit and underground mines in Charters Towers since 1917. Nevertheless, only a little over 100,000 oz. of gold was produced since ca. 1995. It is proposed that both the astounding success of the goldfield in the early 1900’s and the seemingly remarkable failure of modern companies to duplicate this success are due to the style of gold mineralisation.
In this presentation, I’ll highlight evidence that not only demonstrates that this is still a fertile area for gold reserve discovery and subsequent mining but I’ll also show, using a compilation of historical mining results, why the style of mineralisation is both what makes the deposit an attractive area but also what makes it such a difficult mining and exploration operation to take on. For the Charters Towers goldfield to be successful again, it requires a unique and updated approach to reserve definition and mining.
