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NEWGENGOLD REVIEW

New frontiers: Greenfields

explorers strike back

by Michael Washbourne

While ongoing travel restrictions prevented many hardcore geologists from attending the biennial conference
recognised as the world’s pre-eminent gold exploration event, NewGenGold 2021 still attracted a record
crowd as the spotlight shined on the case histories of 14 world-class deposits.
The bumper programme included the Australian discovery trio of Hemi, Havieron and Winu, as well as major
finds from the likes of Canada, Chile, Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea. Keynote addresses were delivered by the
Geological Survey of Victoria and their counterparts from Western Australia on each morning of the two-day
forum at Pan Pacific Perth. In keeping with tradition, the conference closed with a panel discussion on the
potential factors which have come into play over recent years to crystalise Australia’s exceptional success in
the greenfields discovery of multi-million ounce deposits.

or Northern Star Resources Ltd general manager exploration that your geological survey is out there collecting the data and
FJamie Rogers, a quick look back to what was happening working for you in those areas.”
around the time of NewGenGold 2017 offers some possible There is no doubting that more available cash for exploration has
insights into what might have changed since those times of tough been a major contributor to the recent discovery success. As
capital markets for junior explorers. NewGenGold founder Keith Yates presented to delegates in his
“I guess the two things that stood out for me was, one, the C word opening address, gold exploration expenditure in Australia has
– the conglomerate story – and I say that like it’s dirty because we more than tripled since the 2015 forum.
don’t really talk about it much anymore, but that was the big kind Newmont Corp (Australia) director of regional exploration Philippa
of excitement [in gold exploration] from about mid-2017 to early Sivwright agreed a greater pool of funding for dedicated discovery
2018,” Rogers said. work had been crucial to unearthing prolific new finds such as
“All you really had to have was a press release with a map, a Hemi, Havieron and Winu, but she also believed the conviction of
line with conglomerate on it and a nugget somewhere on your some companies to look a bit deeper below the surface was an
tenement and you set the stock exchange on fire. Even though equally important factor.
we didn’t end up discovering another big space in the Pilbara, “Obviously a lot of the ones that are poking out the ground, people
however, I wonder if that kind of dragged the spotlight back into have been looking around and looking over those very accessible
the gold sector, even for companies like De Grey [Mining Ltd]. areas for quite some time, but there’s been a willingness now to
“The other thing I think that stood out for me around that time was say, ‘we’ve got to go back and have a look at what we’re using’,”
the Geological Survey of WA selected some areas as frontier- she said.
type places to go look. They spent a lot of effort collecting new “Techniques are changing and making it easier to look under cover.
data in areas such as the Paterson and West Arunta and I wonder At the end of the day, the basics of drilling a hole and following up
if that was a contributing factor as well. Even if the discoveries have not changed. It’s just that we’re having to go further afield as
were made irrespective of that data, it’s always a comfort to know we run out of those spaces sticking out of the ground.”

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