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Celebrating
25

YeARS

Est.1994

In the latest of our series of retrospectives to celebrate Paydirt’s 25th anniversary this year, we
dip into the October back issues to take a look at Australia’s burgeoning diamond exploration
scene, a Friedland visit to the Australian Nickel Conference and Andrew Forrest starting his
post-Anaconda life at new vehicle Fortescue Metals Group Ltd

1995 1996

The first-ever October edition of A year later, Friedland wasn’t travelling
Paydirt heralded the impending arrival so well, or likely at all, as Paydirt
of Robert Friedland for the inaugural reported the US Government had frozen
Australian Nickel Conference, to be $US150 million of his assets following
held in Kalgoorlie on December 4-5. the sale of Diamond Fields to Inco for
Friedland as chairman of Ivanhoe $US3.14 billion. The US Government
Capital and a major shareholder in was insisting Friedland use his proceeds
Diamond Fields Resources, whose to clean up a Colorado mine disaster
recent Voisey Bay nickel-copper-cobalt he was implicated in. On the domestic
project was stacking up as “among the scene, West Australian Premier
lowest cost producers in the world”. Richard Court opened the Goldfields
Elsewhere, Paydirt looked at the potential impact of the proposed gas pipeline. Court said the $450 million project would help end the
CRA-RTZ merger, Nick Giorgetta was hoping to apply his Midas boom-bust economic cycle by allowing large-scale projects to take
touch once again to the Dalgaranga project, near Mt Magnet, and advantage of 60% lower energy costs. The year also saw Paydirt
nickel was being touted as a potential company-builder for WMC host its annual Diamond Conference. The sector was buoyant in
thanks to the start of operations at Mt Keith. the mid-90s with 22 pages dedicated to an event which featured 23
company presentations.

1997

The diamond theme continued in 1998 with Kimberley Diamond Company completing the company-making acquisition of the Ellendale
diamond field in WA. Meanwhile, Paydirt was looking forward to a new era of laterite developments with site visits to the Cawse and Bulong
projects in WA. In his Editor’s Note, Ross Louthean demanded a dedicated Resources Minister from the new Howard Government.

2001

Four years on and the Paydirt editorial team was still unhappy with the Federal Government’s approach to
the sector. The October edition featured a provocative cover story from Mark Fraser asking why the two major
parties were heading to an election without resources policies. Michael Minosora had submitted a paper to the
Commonwealth arguing for the introduction of a flow-through share scheme to boost exploration. Columnist
Observer suggested Federal Government ambivalence was as dangerous to the sector as the recent 9/11
attacks. On the company front, Paydirt turned its attention to “Diamond” Joe Gutnik and his diamond
exploration push in both Australia and Canada and in the preview to the Australian Nickel Conference, we
asked just how far Russian giant Norilsk Nickel might go to secure more production (clue: As far as WA), future
Norilsk target LionOre had managing director Mark Ashley boasting of three major projects on the books and
Adrian Griffin was also featured, talking up the potential to use atmospheric pressure leaching at Preston
Resources’ Bulong project.

Page 18 OCTOBeR 2019 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT