We have the privilege of sitting down with Ed Issues, somebody
credited with the discovery of Platonic Bronzewing and John
Day. He's also negotiated with some
giants of the mining industry, including Joe Goodnik, Mark
Creasy and Robert Champion Decrepitney, just to name a few.
Right Ed has played a a massive part in in big corporate moves
like he's been. He's been amongst several
takeovers, rode the highs and lows of the gold game.
But yeah, great central well, you know Luna when it was Apex
Minerals even having a a front row seat at the Hemi discovery
part of the strategy that that that led to that too.
Add to that he lived through the stories of sons of Gwalia as
well as leading St. Barbara for a period of time. 50
years on, Ed is still chasing discovery, right?
He's energized by the future, hunting the next big find, a
true giant of, of mineral discovery.
He's got a wonderful strategy for actually finding stuff.
And when you see serially successful people like Ed with,
with just discovery after discovery next to their name,
you know, at that point it's not luck.
You must be doing something right.
We're thrilled to share the conversation.
And how often is it that we get to sit down next to next to
someone that that is is regularly attributed with three
enormous discoveries being platonic, Bronzing and Jundee.
But not just those Ed issues has been around the footy, many,
many other discoveries. And we're delighted to, to have
him in the hot seat with us today.
You've been, you've been doing a lot of research about Ed and
I'm, I'm insanely curious to have this conversation with a
serially successful explorationist like yourself,
Ed. Mate, you couldn't have said it
any better. Ed, we're very grateful that
you've joined us here today. And I'm very curious to hear of
those 3 discoveries that Trev just mentioned, which are often
attributed to to you and the team you worked for there, Which
one was the sweetest? Bronzing was the sweetest
because by then we knew after the discovery of Platonic what
we had to do to be very focused on achieving rapid success.
And, and you know, there there was good science behind it and
good geologists working with me in the team that understood that
process and that requirement also 'cause we all know that
capital is very impatient and risk capital even more so.
So the the one of the driving forces in my thinking has always
been to do things in a very timely manner.
I think I read that bronzing was hit on the the 64th hole of a 65
hole program. Is that is that right?
Yeah, that that's correct. I mean, basically what we were
doing there, we knew there was gold at Mount McClure to the
West and there was gold at Mount Joel to the east.
And there was this area, this substantial area in between that
was undercover. And we'd figured that the
laterite that was exposed at Mount McClure to the West most
probably went undercover in the area in between.
So we decided that we drill along existing roads and fence
lines at 400 meter spacing. The reason for the spacing, that
wide spacing was that if there's going to be this laterite under
the cover and if there's going to be gold under the laterite,
then there would be some, some distribution of gold in the
laterite profile. And, and you know, obviously if
it's going to be of any size, it could could be easily 400 meters
in dimension. So that's what we did.
And so not all the, the we basically drilled these holes in
the circle, the north-south line, east, West, north-south
and then from West to east. And as as you said, it was the
second last hole of the program that intersected the laterite at
about 20 meters below the surface and it had from memory
it had about four meters of 2 grams.
But the hole kept going and we intersected 10 meters at 1g at a
depth of 70 meters. Critical thing was that that
gold was associated with quartz veining in altered matrix which
was the target. So having having got those
results, we accepted the fact that this was pretty interesting
and step immediately 200 meters to the north with RC drilling
and the bronze wing discovery was made.
As a consequence of that discovery, second last air core
hole or was Rab drilling was cooled.
In those days, the second last air core hole had the 4G or 2G
at 20 meters and 1G at 70 meters, which led to the
discovery of bronze wing. The way your approach to
drilling has been described is it sort of puts a smile on my
face there. I read out some of the snippets,
but one of them was a frontal attack with the drill rig.
Another was that you weren't afraid to drill often and drill
deep. And thirdly that you attack the
area with your customary go for broke enthusiasm.
You clearly had a different approach.
What was it that you you sort of put it most down to that enabled
the 3 discoveries in in relatively sort of short
succession there? We understood, we understood the
geology, we could see the potential scale.
And so the step from the discovery type intersections to
next step after that was to see the scale of it.
And once the scale of that had been established, like, you
know, whether it was 1 kilometre in a strike or two kilometres in
a strike, that that then determined the the next phase of
drilling and, and the spacing of it.
And also, of course, at what depth you had to get, always had
to get the third dimension to get a better understanding, you
know, of, of, of the, of the potential of the deposit.
And the concept of doing early diamond drilling was to help to
understand the geology better because it's, and any geologist
will tell you that trying to understand the geology from, you
know, RC chips is difficult, particularly if they're, if
they're with it. So stop sort of arguing with
yourself. We'll be drilled early diamond
holes to get a better understanding of the geology.
What, what was the sort of emotion like in, in, in the camp
when you made these discoveries? Like for, for geologists to make
one of these things in, in their careers a pretty exciting
feeling. And I'm sure there would have
been a lot of doubt around the, the market and around the, the,
the geological community about how you guys were, were
approaching things. So if we can sort of put
ourselves in inside the room with you guys, what was the the
sort of feeling? Well, it was one of it's the
chase, right? And there was one of it was
always one of great excitement, right from, from, you know,
obviously the geologists on site to those were, that were working
with me in Melbourne and, and the board, you know, including
Joseph Gutnick in those, those days.
He, he was always very enthusiastic and, and followed,
followed the advice that was he was being given.
And so, you know, you had a, you had a, a very collegiate and a
lot of camaraderie at at on site because of the success that was
being achieved. And, and you mentioned your,
your relationship with Joe Gutnick there it was, you know,
one, one of the most impactful in, in the market on geology in,
in WA through the late 80s in into the 90s.
What what what do you sort of ascribe the the the dynamic like
in the, the the ultimate success of that relationship to?
What an unlikely individual to have bold exploration success in
WA. Just it's, it's remarkable.
Well, Joseph was smart and had access to the money and you
know, by then I'd already had a 20 odd years experience in WA.
Understood. I thought I understood the
regolith and how that worked. And one of the reasons for that
is that I as an individual and as company representatives, we
supported the CSIRO research into laterite sampling to tell
us what was happening underneath.
And that was very, that was also very effective.
So that's, that was the first leg.
And then once, once you once you've intersected the drilling,
once you've intersected gold in the drilling, well, then the
only thing to do is to keep drilling rather than get sides,
you know, sidetracked by doing more geophysics or some other,
you know, some other exploration technique.
We just said, no, we had the gold, we understood where where
it's at. So let's keep going and and
that, you know, the management team and the board, of course
we're all in favour of that because it produced the results.
Can you tell us more about that that relationship with the, the
CSIRO and how that kind of unlocked some of those
discoveries and, and your thinking?
Well, yeah, I mean when I first went to WA in 19 early 1970, one
of my exploration manager was of at that time as Ray Smith, who
then went on to work from 72 onwards at the CSIRO and very
specifically studying sampling of laterite nodules to get a
sense as to what was happening beneath laterite cover.
And that, I mean, basically that research started in 1972 and
Platonic, which was a result of doing laterite nodule sampling
in an area where there'd been no gold previously was applied, you
know, resulted in the discovery in 1986.
So this is, this is was a long term research project that in
the end bore a lot of fruit, but it was it was long, a long time
in getting to the point. And I as an individual was
always keen on understanding the what the what the Regulus was
likely to tell us and the companies that I was working
for. We always supported that
research on an ongoing basis. And, and just to, to spell it
out, what was the like the finding from the CSIRO that
actually helped you to, to, to make gold discoveries just by
sampling the latter eye? Well, OK, you've got, when we
first went to Platonic, we sampled it what was the old
mineral claim boundaries corners.
So that was like a one, one by two kilometre grid.
And the first time we went there, the results generated a
1g per ton sample. Now 1g per ton sampled in a
laterite nodule in essence probably pick that over every
day of the week. But this was in an area where
there had been no, no previous gold mining, no historic gold
mining. So we figured that was pretty
interesting. So we went back and collected
another round of samples. And the second time around we
got samples with 30 grams per tonne.
And of course then it's self-evident that the only thing
to do was to drill and we drilled 25 holes first up.
Sorry. We drilled 30 holes first up.
Five of them hit gold. The other 25 in the end were all
within the open pit, but only five of the first thirty holes
intersected gold. But of course they were
interesting results, so we followed them up immediately and
and the rest was came history. And, and this played a role with
with bronze wing as well, which was a pretty fascinating
discovery story, as I understand it, because initially you, you
had a the thinking in the market, it was a kind of lower
grade or body, but that that changed once you started
drilling it at depth. Is that right?
Yeah. Well, I mean basically the first
yes, the first No, the even from the outset the first RC results
and I don't remember them exactly today, but the first RC
results certainly at Brunswing intersected, you know 5 grams
were done over several meters and that again changed the
landscape. But the important thing was
taking the step from getting 10 meters at 1g per ton at 70
meters, which is, which is not economic by any standard, but
understanding the geology and following that up.
And we didn't have to go through a, you know, through a joint
venture committee meeting or, you know, try to convince some
management who didn't understand what this really could mean.
We didn't have to do that. Joseph.
And I said, OK, this is a good result.
We'll follow it up. That's what we did.
You did at a point and you and you relayed this story to us
when we spoke a week ago after work with Mark Creasy a bit.
And there was a deal you did to take 51% ownership of a project
and put up a bit of capital that everyone else in the market who
had looked at wasn't willing to kind of take.
Can you take us through that story?
Yeah, sure. After the discovery of Platonic
and the sale of Platonic cash was used to explore in part for
diamonds in the in the Platonic area.
And there was good, yeah, I mean, there was some, some
humour about that. But in fact Anglo or De Beers
were exploring for diamonds in the in the same area.
So it, it, it, it, it was a valid, you know, there was a
valid basis for exploring it for diamonds.
And Joseph was keen to find diamonds.
And so we persisted with that some time.
But then I, I do recall that Mark Reesey approached this at
one time to do a, he had Jundee and he had a large part of the,
the handle belt which he joint ventured out previously.
And people had spent money looking for base metals at one
time. And he got the land back and he
kept, kept this very large land package together.
But the deal that he wanted at the time was to get a 51%
interest in Jundee. He had to put up a nominal
amount as an option payment. And I think it was something
like $50,000 at the time. But the hook for Creasy was that
he wanted $3,000,000 cash after 12 months for that option to be
exercised. And Joseph at wasn't ready to
take that jump away from diamonds.
So we sort of left it for the moment and went and then as the
diamond, in my view, as the diamond exploration wasn't being
that successful, I said to I, I advised Joseph that maybe we
should go back to Gracie and see if that deal was still possible.
And it was. And he told us then and he's
made it public himself that during that, in that 12 month
period, he had 19 different companies come to look at the
land, in particular at Jundee. And they all balked at this
notion of having to pay $3,000,000 cash in 12 months
time and so didn't proceed. Now, I, I said to Joseph at the
time, if, if we can't work out in 12 months whether we can pay
$3,000,000 to exercise the option to earn 51%, then we
shouldn't be in this business. So we agreed.
And while we're negotiating with Gracie on, on that, on Jundee,
he said, oh, look, I've got all this other land, you know, to
the South and I'll do a joint venture deal with you on that.
If you like, you know, earning you can earn 7070% or 75% by
spending all the money up to and including a feasibility study,
bankable study, right. OK, job done.
And we agreed then to do both Jundee and the rest of the
annual belt at that time and there was no upfront payment for
the joint venture on the rest of the Angel belt.
So it was a good, it was a good deal for Great Central at the
time. And of course, history tells us
that he ended up being a very good deal for Mark Creasy as
well. I mean this this sort of led to
his his first big breakthrough success.
What? What was it sort of like
negotiating and and dealing? With him, oh, it was extremely
difficult. We thought he's a hard
bargainer. But it it was difficult, but it
was not unreasonable. Yeah, we had many late night
meetings, but to to, to not out what, what was fair to both
sides. And I think in the end the deal
that was struck looked favourable, you know, to to
mark, but was also favourable to Great Central, ended up with
100% of it there. The the the Jundee that we that
we know is jundee to today, Did it always look and feel like the
the special Jundee? Well, Jundee's in really in two
parts. Well, there were three parts to
Jundee, right? There's Jundee, which is the
deal that the Great Central did with Mark.
And then then Eagle and another company had the western part of
Jundee and they they'd already found some gold there.
And then there was an Eastern bloc which Creasy kept to
himself. So when we first drilled there,
we ended up I think in the oxide zone about 1 to one and a half
million oz and that you know that was that happened pretty
rapidly and then I thought, OK, So what happens at depth.
So I thought we knew what we're doing.
So we targeted, you know, obviously the higher grade
results in the RC drilling in the oxide zone to see what
happened. And, you know, the first few
diamond holes got very little. And so I realized that we
actually weren't that clever after all.
So I said, OK, the only way to tackle this was, you know, we
had a strike length by the end of about 8 kilometers was to
drill diamond holes, you know, to about four or 500 meters deep
at 400 meters centers along the whole strike.
And that was the plan. The second, I think it was the
second diamond hole and and now it's just read space.
There was, there was the only geological impact was that we
had this strike length and we needed to find out what was
happening. And I think again, it was the
2nd hole intersected Barton and it, it was a high grade result.
And then we followed it up from there.
So did it always look special? At the time I remember thinking
that bronzing was pretty good, but crazy to his due told me no
no, Jandy was always going to be better.
So maybe he had he had a more insightful view than I did at
that time. And and there was a view from
you and the team at the time that this would become a massive
pit. Yeah, right.
Yes. You, I mean you worked through
that 90s period in an era where the gold price was going against
you, unlike it has for for the last 20 years, which is a
completely different framing to to go back and think about.
But was that sort of constantly in the back of your mind there?
Yeah, it it did. I remember going to a, a
conference in gold conference in New York, Maryland probably was
the Denver Gold Show, not New York and Denver in 97.
There was so much exploration going on at that time around the
world, not only in Australia. I thought there's going to be so
much gold. It's going to be found now
whether the 2 are related or not.
But the gold price started to fall from then on.
So yes, the falling gold price had a had a big impact on on how
we're thinking about it. But at Jundee, the pits, the
pits we had, we created several pits that would, that wouldn't
actually as much as we might have wanted.
They didn't join up, so we just took them as they were.
There were some pretty sort of vocal debates between Whitney
and various Australian politicians at the time because
I think we were, as a central bank, selling a large portion of
our gold. That market too, which was a was
a headache for all the gold miners across Australia.
Yeah, well, it was at that time that Australia sold, sold its
gold when it was already the third largest gold producer in
the world. It actually made no, no sense.
But you know, they obviously, the politicians were obviously
getting other advice. JD found this this description
somewhere. The Gutnick Gutnick issues was
described as one of the most creative Capital Intellect
combinations in the market. What do you think of that
characterisation? It's very complementary comment
of course. But look, we work well together
for a long time, for a long period of time.
And, and I think it was the fact that Joseph understood the risks
that were that were involved and I, I, I guess I understood the
geological risks and that combination worked very well.
You reflect a lot on the, the access to capital being enabling
the, the pace of discoveries And I I almost, I'm flashing forward
a lot, but you know, in a lot of ways like your, your DGO was,
was you being a financier for, for exploration kind of flip
rolls. You were now you were now good.
Nick, did you ever see it that way?
Yes or no. I mean success in exploration is
largely a function of how much capital is there is.
If you accept the fact, yes, you've got to have strong
technical teams and you have the environment in which you can do
that work. But in in Australia, most
explorers are starved for capital.
And in my view, exploration success is improved with more
capital being available. And I've had this conversation
with this with very large institutional investors and that
that point had never occurred to them.
There's this concept that exploration success in, in
Australia is it's, it's speculation, but it doesn't have
to be, it can actually be success can be a function of
knowledge, application of new technology and, and the smarts
of the, of the team. And that's the one I mean, one
of the benefits in Australia today is that, you know, modern
day expressions been going on for 60 years or more.
And as a function of exploration of that exploration, it's all
been recorded at, at the Mars department, whatever it's called
today. And that's readily accessible.
So you can actually keep building on past exploration if
it's for success. The the concept of drilling
something out like Swiss cheese comes up a lot with the way
you've approached things. I know we were speaking about it
just before, but how do you reflect on that sort of
statement? Well, I think I, I, I always
regard it as a derogatory statement, but it in fact was
necessary to get to indicated resources or at least probable
reserves to be able to raise the capital to develop the mines.
And that's, that was the fundamental reason.
And the only, the only time we, we did drill holes like Swiss
cheese was if we actually knew what we had.
And you know, there was largely a program or always a program of
infill drilling to make sure that we actually got understood
the distribution of the gold as it was.
I mean, fortunately we never made a mistake.
We always were able to produce to the reserves that we'd
estimated. The the turn of the the turn of
the century, you're you're MD of new Hampton gold fields.
What, what, what's your, what's your thinking with this, this,
you know, new chapter in, in your career?
Well, OK, so I thought that we could create with New Hampton a,
a, a gold exploration company and, and basically do the same
as what I'd been doing with Joseph and great Central Minds
and Central. And it had, New Hampton had a,
had a small operation. Yes, it was short of the feed.
Well, we'd been there before. So I thought we could fix that
by drilling appropriately. And it was, you know, close to
Kalgoorlie. It was in the right place and
didn't actually quite work out like that.
And then, and then we, we, we acquired the, we acquired the
Bell mine and that was part of giving New Hampton an
additional, additional operation and an additional exploration
opportunity. But with most operations,
operations suck all the energy and all the oxygen and
exploration tends to get put to one side and, and that's what
happened in that case. And so it wasn't, it was and
then it got taken over by, by Harmony, which wasn't my idea.
But the by then the largest shareholder of New Hampton was
was Robert Dkrepny, Robert Champion Dkrepny.
And he, he, he didn't want, he sold out to, to Harmony to
basically divest that interest. So that I wasn't in favour of
the, or the price of the takeover and objected to it.
But the rest of the board said no, no, that's that's what
happened. How hard was that sort of
transition? I know you'd been doing a lot of
management in in your later years at at Great Central, but
that transition from exploration and working within a framework
to being a manager and running a company.
Oh, that was yeah, that was a challenge, right?
Because now, I mean, working with Joseph, Joseph was clearly
responsible for raising the capital.
I was responsible for, you know, spending the money wisely and,
and exploring when we got to New Hampton, of course, I was
responsible for both. And that was, even though I'd
been in the market and people knew who I, who I, who I was and
why I did, it was still difficult.
And it was also a difficult time, you know, in, in the
market full stop. So yes, it was.
It was not easy. You then headed up after sort of
finding your way into St. Barbara of all companies, which
was a, well, it's a company with a fascinating history and plenty
of ups and downs, but sort of circa 2004.
Find your way in there and then get your hands on some Sons of
Gwalia assets. Tell us about that sort of
period. OK.
The sons of Barbara, the shareholders of of Saint
Barbara, the shareholders St. Barbara were unhappy with the
management and they rolled, rolled the board and appointed
myself as the MD and Colin Wise, who I brought along as the
chairman. And this major shareholder at
time was Resource Capital Fund and I'd worked with the
principals of that fund in the development of, of Brunswick.
They, they, they were the early financiers of Brunswick.
In fact, they, they lent some money to complete the, they had
central money to complete the feasibility study on Brunswick.
So I had a good relationship with them.
But prior to that I'd spent a year advising sons of Gaulia on,
on their expiration. This was to the board rather
than to the management. So I was very familiar with the
assets and and in fact was advising them on what I thought
should happen at Sons of Gulia, at the Sons of Gulia Mine and
and elsewhere for that matter. But, and Sons of Gulia Mine was
the was the principal asset. I mean, they had Karasu Dam and
they also had Southern Cross operation.
So I was quite familiar with those assets.
And then Sons of Guli went into administration.
They were concerned, the management were concerned about
meeting the future hedge requirements.
And when they approached the counterparties about that, they
said, well, if you have concern, then what can we do?
So they put Sons of Guli into administration when Sons of
Gorilla had $60 million in bank. So it's the the people forget
these sorts of things and put it into administration.
And I thought, oh, this is now I was at Saint Barbara.
I thought this is interesting. So it became clear that the
administrator wanted to sell everything one package.
And in terms of the gold and the lithium and Greenbush's
tatellite speaks what you know, they they're treated separately.
There are a lot of different Docker proposals that were put
in. There were there's so many
proposals, but was was, was the administrator just just
favouring a clean outcome? Is that how he do?
He was he was very much in favour of all the gold assets
being done in one go. And the question is why do that?
So because there was there were environmental bonds of some 30
odd million attached to the gold assets.
So, so OK, so Resource Capital fund was the major shareholder
in Barbara. I put it to them that we do this
Sons of Grilly deal. They had to figure out how to,
how to get rid of these bonds, finance the bonds.
When you know, when St. Barbara's a company had a market
cap of 50, how do you finance bonds of 30 odd million?
Well, they, they got letters of credit and sold that issue for
us. And then we got, we bought, we
were able to buy the assets, the whole company for $4 million
cash plus replacing the bonds. And so the outlay was $4
million. And then we had to sit, we had
to work out, OK, what could, what could St.
Barbara do now? So we decided there and then
that we sell Karra Sudan and and the Southern Cross operations
and focus on, on, on Leonora sons of Gulia mine.
And of course is that a good decision?
Well, it was all we could do at the time rather than dilute, you
know, raise a lot of capital and dilute the existing
shareholders. So we did sell that and of
course tells us that Raleigh, Finland soon ended up with Kara
Sudan. This now owns tons of gold in
mine and that's that's interesting.
But anyway, yeah, we, we developed, well, what we did at
Sansaguli after we got control of it was a very simple thing.
The previous management had, we're advising the board that to
look to actually develop the extensions of the Sansaguli mine
below 1000 meters depth required sinking of a shaft and then
drilling from the base of the shaft.
Of course, we know the shaft was going to cost 120 million.
It would take two or more years to do and then you still had to
do all the drilling. And my advice to the board at
the time was no, we actually don't need to do that.
You can drill from the surface, but that was rejected by by the
management. So of course when we got hold of
the assets, that's what we did. We drilled from the surface.
Now the cost yes was $300 a metre, which was outlandish,
outrageous, but the cost was only $30.00 an ounce and that
was the critical component. So we're able to then after
consultation with again with resource geologists,
specialists, what spacing did we require for them to be able to
sign off on indicator resources to get to reserve because we, we
knew we had to raise capital at some stage to develop redevelop
the mark. Anyway, the answer was if we
drilled it at a 40 by 40 meter spacing even you know, down to
1800 meters that would, that would most probably was the
answer most probably get to indicated resources.
And that's what we did and we did we, we generated I think
3,000,000 ounces in resources from that drilling and 1.8
million ounces in reserves and were able to redevelop demand.
And it's, it's since then it has produced more than 2 million oz.
So, but the critical thing was that we're able to do that
relatively quickly because you could have two or three or four
rigs on on site. The drilling results was were
generally better than what the model had indicated.
You had inferred resources below 1000 meters, but so you actually
had a picture as to how much gold you would get it once you
intersected the ore body. And in many cases the drilling
results were better than what the model predicted, which which
was heartening, but at the same time was necessary.
So in the end, the we're quite confident about the about the
resource model and particularly about the grade and the grade
stood up very well for a long time.
Was was was Tower Hill part of the picture back then too?
Tower Hill, That's a good question.
Tower Hill was. We looked at Tower Hill hard.
It had infrastructure issues which you know which Genesis
have resolved I think very elegantly in terms of stopping
the railway line rather than moving the railway line.
From an underground viewpoint. It was clear that the ground
conditions were not favourable for underground development.
But, and I did think at one time about driving a decline from the
base of the Sons of Goria shaft to decline, sorry to, to, to
Tower Hill, but we didn't didn't get around to doing that.
But that that was that was an idea we were contemplating at
the time. But I think what Genesis have
come up with is very elegant solution.
Big open pit at 2 grams. Wow.
Isn't it remarkable, you know, 2020 years ago put a shaft in
Gualia and like find a way to get around this railway for
Tower Hill. The strategy hasn't changed too
much. I mean, they have they explored
the shaft and then they they shafted the shaft plan.
The shafted the shaft, yeah. How do you kind of think about
that period, that sort of five year block?
Were you managing the company? Did you have enough time to sort
of focus on exploration and and making discovery or were you
constantly dragged into the the ups and downs of managing mines?
Well, I think history tells us that you know, operations suck
all the energy and effort and you know we did have, we did
have an ambition to get to a 400,000 oz gold producer which
which bent and at that stage we had Sons of Gaulia and Southern
Cross operations. Now we're going to be producing
about 2:50 to 300,000 oz a year. So we had to find another
thousand ounce producer, which we didn't do, didn't, didn't
achieve in the time frame. Well, I mean, we did do a lot of
drilling at Tower Hill and that that was an obvious one.
And I, I do, I do remember the time when we're drilling both at
Sons of Gaulia mine deep holes. So standing well back, see the
rigs from the from the highway. But when we're drilling at Tower
Hill, we had two or three RC rigs drilling and the highway
was quite close to Tower Hill. And when when we started doing
that drilling, the share price of Saint Barbara went up just
because everyone could see there was a lot of activity or I think
that's where it was. I I really reflect now more so
than than having read about it before on this model of having
the exploration chief and the the sort of financing chief.
Is that something you ever tried to to recreate later or is it
just impractical? I think, I think that's probably
worked with DGO if we if we look hard at it.
Bruce Parker, my colleague and Co director, yes.
Was he? He was a geologist, but he went,
he went soon went into broking and ended up being head of
Macintosh Securities, which was Australia was one of the two
Australian brokers and they ended up being taken over by
Merrill Lynch. And Bruce was, you know, CEO of
Merrill Lynch for a while. So his background was he had a
lot of experience in the market and I think that that
combination is basically worked again.
So the short answer is yes, I think it is.
It is a good model. Yeah.
And and you obviously had a lot of success there with with DGO.
You told us a great story, which I'd love for you to share on the
discovery of Hemi and the advice you were giving and what could
have been, I think some six years prior to the eventual
discovery there. Yeah.
Well, look, if I if I can just start at the beginning perhaps
in that when Bruce and I got together in DGODGO had a market
cap of $2,000,000, right. So it was and, and the reason
why I was was that because it was difficult to raise capital
in that in that time. And we were doing, I was, I was
basically doing a, or trying to emulate what Mark Creasy had
done. And that was to pick up large
areas and, and have Greenfield's exploration happening.
When Bruce said he wanted to join with me, I said that was
that was good. And we sat down and said OK, so
where's the best place to look for gold?
And the answer, the real answer was that it's probably already
held by both large and small companies.
So having come to that conclusion, we said OK, well
let's have a look at all the ASX listed companies they were
exploring for gold in Australia. And there were about 160.
And we very quickly of course got down to about 10, of which
de Grey was #1 and NTM was #2 and NTM being ended up being
taken over by Dosian and #3 was Yandel.
And the reason for picking de Grey as the number one was it
had a large, had a large land area and gold was known
throughout the area. And we actually did a, we did an
estimate, a risk estimate as to how much gold we could find by
extending the existing deposits. And we made allowance for the
discovery of a new one. Didn't know where that would be,
but we made because because of the prospectivity of the land,
we thought there's likely to be another whistle or another male
on a you know 1 to 2 million oz type deposit close by.
And we figured out how much that would cost to drill and we did
it on a risk weighted basis. So in other words the to extend
with normal amount of to 1 to 2 million oz, we thought the risk
was risk was quite low. So that was 75% success rate.
But in terms of finding a new one, we thought, well, that had
to be a risk rate of about 50 percent, 5050 chance finding a
new one. Anyway, that led us to investing
in the grey and we invested in the grey at $0.20 at a time and,
and we're quite happy with that. And of course the share price
went down to $0.05. So we, we, we realised we
weren't that clever after all. But the market was sensing that
the grey had to, had to buy out the there was a Chinese partner
that they had an option over to buy them out and they needed to
raise $13 million for that. So the market sensed that there
was more money needed to be raised.
So the share price went down. Anyway, cut a Long story short.
We, we Bruce and I helped them raise with my son Grant helped,
helped them raise the money at at $0.05.
And one of the conditions was that we go on the board, Bruce
and I would go on the board which we did.
I did spend and the other large shareholder at that time was
Kirkland Lake and they didn't want to contribute to any to the
capital raise. So they, they got diluted, but
they did want to have a look at the land position one time.
So they came over and I as just as a a shareholder at that time,
I went with the Kirkland Lake people and we did a 2 day
helicopter ride looking at all the prospects.
And the one thing that became very clear to me was that that
this was a vast area, a vast area.
It was 150 kilometers long and about 50 kilometers wide.
And yes, there was gold deposits throughout.
And you could, you could actually sort of sense that in
the past, companies and, or individuals would be overwhelmed
by the, by the scale of what they had.
So they always sort of went back to what they knew.
So there was all this concept of incrementally adding to what,
what had been found. And well, we had to, we had to
think differently about it. And also, mind you, you know,
even highly respected academic geologists said no bill was
different to the Yule gun. You're not going to find any big
deposits. They only, they only found small
ones. Well, of course you could
dismiss that argument from a, a statistical viewpoint when you
look at gold provinces. So we didn't take any notice of
of the respected geological wisdom and figured out that, OK,
so this thing was 150 kilometres long.
There it became clear there were about four areas each of about
30 kilometres long, which had been hardly explored or poorly
tested. And we knew each of the existing
deposits were about 1 kilometre long.
So it worked out that you could drill air core drilling at 1
kilometre spacing or thereabouts across the structures and it
each area, there were four areas, each area would cost
about $1,000,000 each to do that first Pass Air Corps drilling.
It took us, it took us a while to convince both board and
management that that's what they should do.
In fact, took more than six months.
But when they started, of course, the Hemi discovery was
the first area they adopted this strategy and it happened within
the first two weeks. Now the, the story of course is
that the real story is that yes, the the geology team Andy led by
Andy Beckworth and Phil Tamara, very competent, very competent
people. But the strategy they had of
finding a little bit more and building a central mill was
always gonna not gonna really cut it from a shareholder
viewpoint. The Gray put out ADFS on Was it
DFS on? There was a study put on on
Malanar in 2019 I wanna say. A 2018 like.
Yeah. So that was that was a strategy.
Was that, that was, that was a strategy?
It was, yeah. And and we said, no, we, we
haven't invested in the Gray for that strategy.
We've invested because you've got this large land package with
enormous potential. So let's go and see if we can
find. And then of course, once you
say, let's see how we can find here, they have to explain how
you go about it. And that was the strategy bit
that we, we, we wrote it up 4 areas, each 30 kilometres long.
It's a drill space drill, Travis, every everyone kilometre
holes. I can't remember the spacing was
probably 160 meters or something along each line.
And let's see what happens. That's the business that we're
in, right? And, and yes, so as I said
before, they him, he came up within virtually within the
first two weeks of starting on that strategy.
And then subsequently, of course, we found and and de
Grave made this public themselves.
They had actually drilled in the Hemi area six years earlier, the
air core drilling the the rods that got bulked in the gravel
layer at about 40 meters below the surface and stopped.
And if they kept, if they'd gone another meter or two, they would
have hit, I think it was Deusan or Eagle, one of those, which
then would have course escalated and they would have found the
rest of it. So the really critical point for
explorers and for shareholders in the exploration company is to
be absolutely clear that the drilling that's being done is
effective. Because if it's not, then don't
even bother starting. And if it isn't effective, then
keep going until you have completed an effective drilling
program. This.
Is this is a lesson that you, you, you you've had several
times in your in your career. And before we started recording,
you were telling telling one of those very examples.
Do you want to do you want to talk about Yeah, your your
observation of the depth of drilling and.
Yeah, it's a very, it's a, it's a beautiful example really in
that we're at, at Mount Pleasant just, you know, north of north
of Kalgoorlie. Mount Pleasant area in the in
the 80s was one of the red hot gold areas to the extent where
even Western mining got involved with Consolidated Exploration
company at the time. And yeah, and and Elders
resources were there. So it was it was it was one of
the hot areas. Anyway, there was a mill there
and Central Mining bought the land package and the mill and it
was in the early 90s. The mill had about six months of
reserves. So we had to had to find some
new reserves and went there. And you could see at Mount
Pleasant there was this corridor about 8 kilometres long, about
two kilometres wide where there were several open pits.
And it was, it looked like there was drilling everywhere.
So it had been drilled. So in effect, it looked like the
job had been done. However, when you went to the
open pitch, you could see there was 20 meters of alluvial cover
over the top of weathered bedrock.
And in, in those days, in the, in the 80s, air core drawing or
Rab drawing as it was called. Yeah, it was, it was the next
step after soil sampling. You drill down to about 20
meters and often it was a standard depth.
OK, drill down to 20 meters, find out was at the bottom of
the hole. So when we saw this in the in
the open pit wall that there was 20 meters of cover thought, ah,
let's go back to the maps in the office and let's remove all the
holes from the maps that were less than 20 meters deep.
And that created these vast gaps in what looked like an area that
had been drilled. And so we drew up a pattern
pattern I think was 240 meters line spacing, 80m hole spacing
on the lines. The first gap that we drilled
was 500 meters from the existing operating mill.
And we found quarters again within sort of within a month of
starting on that, on that strategy.
And of course quarters produced about 1,000,000 oz.
So the critical thing in all of this is, is to be absolutely
clear that the drilling has been effective in terms of testing
what the geologist might, might be thinking about at the time.
And I, I see it, I mean, even, you know, in the Yandel belt for
example, I mean explorations been going on there since we
found bronze wing in 92. There's still large areas when
when the geologist dragged the maps out that look like they've
been drilled. But do you ask the question how
much of it's effective? And most of the holes go away,
so it's under explored. So is strategy more important
than geological thinking? Although you have to have both.
I mean, the success of HEMI, for example, is a function that you
know, Andrew Beckworth and his team knew exactly what had to do
the what they had to do and how to go about it once they got
onto it. So you can't separate the two.
You actually have to get the right strategy and then have the
right right team together. If, if we look forward now, Ed,
you're, you're doing some exciting stuff in, in SA and
using your, your abundance of experience and and knowledge.
How do you, I think you can sort of relay that like obviously
you're doing that in a, in a private structure.
What are the sort of differences you're you're bringing forward
and how sort of excited are you are the prospects?
Well, we're, I guess we're doing, I'm personally doing two
things. One part of as part of a private
syndicate we're exploring in South Australia for sediment
hosted copper and we're exploring for Degrusa type the
HMS deposits in in the Brier Euroder and Brier basin north of
Megathorough. And so we're doing that and
we're applying the logic and fortunately we have enough
capital between us to actually follow that through.
And as a consequence we've been exploring either as DGO or
privately in on the Stewart shelf in SA now for probably 10
years. And what we're looking for is
sediment hosted copper. They're using the Zambian copper
belt model as, as the analogue. And we've we've established that
the concept is applicable and we found copper mineralization and
now we're finding economic mineralization up to 20 meters
at 1% copper within 20 meters of the surface.
Everything's undercover. We have about 200 kilometers of
strike of what's called the transition zone, which is where
where you would expect the copper mineralization to be.
And we've done, we did a very large soil sampling program last
year and I can't remember how many samples we took, but it's,
it's again, it's identified a number of areas of some scale.
And we know this is reliable because we've got the source
sampling results over where we've actually found corporate
depth. So we're, we're very optimistic
about the potential outcome. And of course the benefit, the
infrastructure benefits are incredible.
And it's only about an hour from Port Augusta.
There's a highway to Alice Springs, there's a railway line,
there's pipelines and there's electric transmission lines
going to Olympic Dam, all within, you know, within one or
two kilometres of where we're exploring.
Yeah, it may, it may in fact be a disadvantage that they're
there if we find copper underneath these transmission
lines. But we'll worry about that when,
when the time comes. But that that, that looks a part
of, it's a joint venture with gold, right?
And, and and part of it we own 100% or Discover Co, the company
owns 100% off. In terms of what we're doing at
Eurida, we're exploring there again, it's a joint venture with
Gold right as we've joined ventured back into the land that
DGO had and Discover Co is in the process of earning its
equity in earning back that equity in, in, in that land.
So it's, and we're look, it's people have been exploring for
Degrusa type mineralisation in the Briar and Urina basin since
the 1970s and Degrusa's the only one that's been on and Monty,
which is a sideshow the only one that's been found.
But the, but the geological evidence is strong that
there'll, there'll be others. And we, we've again, we've been
exploring there now for, for several years and we're
encouraged by what we see. We haven't done a lot of
drilling, We haven't done a lot of recent drilling in the area.
So that's, so that's really the next step.
And then the other thing that I do is I invest in, in the
existing ASICS listed explorers and, and with, with, with the
same lens as what we use to, to identify the HEMI prospects.
In other words, investing companies that have land in
scale potentially have owned 100% of the Land Management has
got to be competent and capable. And so we've invested in the
animal resources and and Cal gold and both of those have, you
know, potential for are are improving gold provinces for a
start and have potential to find decent sized discoveries.
Like with with DGOII, you took issue with being referenced as
an exploration company in the past.
And we're like, we're in the business of discovery, not
exploration. So I find it quite, quite
intriguing that the private entity you're dealing with now,
it's called Discover Code. It's in the name, you can't
mistake it. Why do you feel strongly about
the difference of being an exploration company versus a
discovery company? Well, that's it's, it's the same
reason why I don't like the word project.
We're in the business of making discoveries, not exploring.
And and yeah, is that is that being a bit pedantic?
Well, if it is bad luck, because the purpose of drilling holes
is, is not just to go through the process, but is to get, get
an outcome. And yes, you've got to go
through, you've got to go through the process and you
know, all the, all the checks and balances that need to occur,
either they all need to occur. But at the end of the day,
unless, unless we're clear about why we are doing what we're
doing, you know, you, you can lose sight of the fact.
I mean, there are geologists who love doing geology, whether
whether they whether they find something or not, sometimes
there's not. Well, sometimes it's not the
main game. They just like doing geology.
I like being involved in making discoveries and using geological
knowledge to do that. Is that that outcome of the
chase, as you called it before, still as exciting as it was 50
years ago of? Course it is.
It's it's, you know, you know, getting a a, a drill hole result
when that that's even when you do expect it is yeah, when you
actually have it confirmed that this is potentially something
new or something big or or both, you know, that's it is exciting.
I want to I want to tap in a little bit to to how, how things
unfolded with with DGO, you know, by virtue of DG OS
investment in in the grade DG DG OS market cap.
Also it it exploded, always traded at a bit of a a discount
to to NTA. And for that reason, maybe it
was a pretty, pretty obvious entry to pick up a a substantial
stake into the grey. So ultimately how that
culminated is is gold Rd. acquired DGO you're sitting on
the board of the grey around this time.
I'm I think. So how are you kind of
evaluating the, the, the, the lay of the land knowing that
you're, you know, you're sitting on a world class deposit and
it's going to be of interest to, to, to majors and that, you
know, you're also still at DGO, which is, which is going to have
the stake, which is very attractive.
But that, that's an interesting question and that it does raise
the does raise the issue of conflict.
And that's in the end, in the end, what Bruce and I in
particular decided to do was to every time we invested new
money, we're actually investing it.
We're diluting our interest because our, our share price
wasn't reflecting the true value of our, even our holding in, in
the grey. And when, when we started on the
process of selling DGO to gold, then then potential conflict
arise. So it was best for us to step
step down. Yeah, but do you like, do you
remember the emotions in kind of being in the midst of of a, you
know, a pretty, pretty meaningful.
It was different. It's like, yes, you've been
around discoveries before, but there was there was something
different about Degray and the Degray was a pureplay
exploration company with a giant discovery as opposed to being
being in. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, there
were mixed emotions about about stepping away from it because I
think, you know what I mean, apart from being involved in
exploration in in the exploration phase, also being
involved in in building mines and building villages.
And when you think about that, just for a moment, we actually
built Jandi village 30 kilometres from Luna.
We built the Brunswing village, 40 kilometers from Leinster.
We bought, we built the Sons of Gaulia, this Sons of Gaulia
village in Leonora, right. And, and yet, and there's a,
there's a debate starting now about, about the benefit of the
all stakeholders of mining activity.
But when I think hard about it, if you if you think about our
our British Lioness and the Aboriginal issue that we have,
then you have AFL footballers who are top of their game,
right? Where do they come from?
They usually come from the Wheatbelt towns in WA where they
play football with the local teams.
That's where they get their skills.
And, and yet if we'd actually had the mindset and the
government support and the community support to say build,
build our facility like like they did in the 1960s when BHP
and Rio built, you know, Port Hedland, Parabatou and, and
Mount Newman, etcetera. We'd had that mindset.
You would have been able to establish communities at Leonora
and at Bullena as an example and at Leinster where you had you
could accommodate all aspects of our society.
And then you would have been able to dream a little bit.
You would have been able to have football teams in Waluna and
Leinster and Leonora where the young Aboriginal men could play
the football and the young Aboriginal women would play
netball and you'd have competitions.
And you get, you know, get this community situation happening as
as does happen in the Wheat belt towns, right?
That's never happened. And that's, that's and and the
reason why I raised this is that I've raised this particularly
with with the grey when I was on the board about this same issue
about and it's for them to decide.
But in the end it's only an hour from Port Hedland.
Do is it? Is it really the best in an
overall sense when you've got a 30 year mine to actually have
fly in, fly out from Perth when you've got Port Hedland?
Now it requires a lot of coordination between governments
and companies and communities for these two things to work.
But if you don't even start on it, it's not going to happen.
So yeah. With that all said, you, you've
made an active decision through your career to, to focus on
Australia, to focus on Western and Australia in particular.
So you clearly think the the opportunity set that we have
here sits above the the pack. Well, they do in that clearly.
I mean, Australia, 85% of the rocks that host the, the large
deposits are undercover. So modern day exploration is
only just starting to unpack, unpack that in, in my view,
obviously the infrastructure in Australia in many places is, is,
is supportive of any potential mine development.
The the regulatory environment, whether it's whether it's
environmental or whether it's the traditional owners or
whether it's with conflict of land use between farmers and,
and miners. All of that's pretty well
understood. And yes, it can be bureaucratic
and it can be slow, but there usually is an answer.
And OK, you go to Africa where you can walk up to a mine,
Australian technology will show you where you have to drill, but
then you have the sovereign risk and that sovereign risk keeps
playing out to the disadvantage of, you know, of shareholders,
Australian shareholders anyway. Let's to to our great advantage,
Ed, that you've spent your career exploring in in Australia
and discovering, and let's hope there's a a few more discoveries
left in future. Thanks a lot for joining us and
sharing all your your stories and thoughts and perspectives.
Well, thank you. There we go mate, another
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