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during COVID-19. with capability to do brownfields mainly
The end result for the with a bit of greenfields. And, because
former Doray Minerals we had the need for only one person we
boss was listing Miramar needed someone with geochem, geo-
with $8 million in Octo- physical skills with the ability to write-up
ber and a suite of gold ASX releases; we needed that variety of
and base metals assets skills-base,” Reeves said.
in WA. “We had CSIRO help us in the early
“A lot of money gets days and they were quick in helping us
spent on assets that realise what was in the deposit and we
aren’t economic and had someone with those skills to bring it
won’t be economic,” Kel- all together.”
ly said. While Kelly can attest to the varied
“You also have to mix of skillsets required to make junior
know when to walk away companies successful, he said explor-
Dave Reeves as well.” ers needed an “innate curiosity”.
Kelly said he was cer- “You are not getting things given to
tain there was plenty of you on a plate, you are starting with
Fields and Northern Star can utilise to gold still to be found in WA and chal- nothing and trying to do something from
great effect, however, the priorities of lenged his peers in the industry to tackle that,” Kelly said.
daily production targets needs to be bal- exploration differently in the
anced with ample attention to explora- future.
tion, Mulroney said. “It may be a simple mat-
“We’ll keep doing it while our share- ter of turning the rig around,”
holders allow us to explore,” he said. Kelly said. “It is easy to say
“It is always the challenge, people in a something is pretty sim-
production environment have huge data- ple, but then again…it is all
flows coming in every day…which needs about timing, people having
to be able to be processed and thought new ideas and concepts.”
about in clarity. Mulroney agreed with Kel-
“Various state governments [are also] ly, saying that Northern Star
starting to recognise the need to get had prospered from other
information and are putting out these companies’ assets that had
datasets which will allow everyone in the lacked investment and at-
industry to reassess much more quickly tention.
how to deal with cover and allows us to “Changing the thinking
conceptualise stuff more technically.” of quite a few of things and
The type of clear mind needed to di- perhaps revisit that discov-
gest geological settings in the right con- ery hole that was drilled
text is something Kelly was able to apply back in the late 1980s, but is
still sitting in the dataset and
hasn’t been thought about Stuart Mathews and Michael Mulroney
with new ideas and new
concepts. We really need to be chal-
lenging those concepts and really work- “People in my game need a self-start-
ing hard at it,” Mulroney said. ing attitude to look at things a little dif-
Northern Star can afford the person- ferently. It is quite frustrating as an ex-
nel to devote the time to creating new plorer to manage this constant trade-off
exploration ideas and concepts, but that of doing things systematically and taking
is a scenario far more challenging for time to look at things but then generating
juniors and developers reliant on a small news flow.
band of jack-of-all trades to take an “That is the major difference between
emerging company up the value-chain. the juniors and majors, which is really
After compiling a suite of tenements to driven by that news flow and being able
fly under the Calidus banner, Reeves is to recognise things and not taking any-
now on the cusp of production at War- thing for granted.”
rawoona (fully permitted) in early 2022
starting at an average 90,000 ozpa gold – Mark Andrews
before expanding to 130,000 ozpa in
Stage 2.
“When we started it was quite simple;
we needed one person because that
was our budget. We needed someone
Allan Kelly

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