Dryblower: 'Survivor' Vitale takes Burdekin tribe to Fiji
27 August 2002
"MISSING-in-action to mission-impossible" sounds like a Hollywood film script, but it's not. It is the story of Burdekin Pacific, once a mighty miner, lost in the wilderness of the dot.com world, and now returning to conquer the perils of the Kasi - Mt Kasi, that is.
The plot calls for a dashing young hero to guide Burdekin through its trials as a gold miner somewhere in outback Australia, to brief stardom as a leader in the futuristic world of interactive television, and then into the mountains of a Pacific island as it searches in the jungle for a hill of gold.
Who better to play the lead than that swarthy hunk with the film star name, Gino Vitale. From gold to TV and back to gold, Gino has done it all, seamlessly. The return of Burdekin Pacific looks like being achieved as if nothing at all has happened over the past five years.
Students of business, including Dryblower, know that this is not quite the case. Dryblower goes so far as to nominate Gino for an award - the survivors medal for meritorious service in the face of awkward market mood swings.
The story so far: Gino started his career in Perth as a stock market sort of chap with a role at Normandy Capital, a merchant banking arm of Rob de Crespigny's Normandy Mining. Gino broke free of Rob when he launched Burdekin in 1993 as a $5.3 million float, which paid Peko Wallsend $2.6 million for the McKinnons project near Cobar in western New South Wales.
For a few years, Burdekin and McKinnons prospered. In 1995, Burdekin was even laying plans to lift gold production to 100,000 ounces a year courtesy of expansion at McKinnons, and new discoveries such at Far Fanning near Charters Towers in Queensland.
Gold, however, was swamped by something even more exciting - dot.com land. In the late 1990s, Burdekin joined the stampede out of gold and into technology. More than $12 million went into three interactive TV ventures called ICE Interactive, Two Way TV, and e-MAX Entertainment.
At the time, the deals looked good. ICE had been taken as far as trials with consumers and it had excellent parents in Oracle Australia and Liberate Technologies. Sadly, the public did not have the same enthusiasm for ICE as Burdekin. One day, interactive TV, the sort of thing you use to order pizza while watching Home Alone, will be compulsory behind the terylene curtains of suburban Australia - but not just yet.
Whatever the final result, Burdekin dumped TV, tipping its technology adventures into voluntary administration, and began preparing for a return to the world of gold courtesy of an old asset which had been gathering dust in the company's back pocket, Mt Kasi.
The new plan, which is yet to breath much life into Burdekin's 3.9c share price, is to return to Mt Kasi, a gold deposit which has been frustrating managers for years. It seems like only yesterday - in fact it was 1998 - that Mt Kasi was an asset inside the delightfully named Pacific Island Gold (or PIG, according to its initials, and stock exchange code). At that time, PIG was under the management of Stephen Everett, the name now making BeMaX a household name in the titanium minerals business.
Gino's return as the man to conquer Mt Kasi is being funded through a $3 million share issue at 3.2c a pop. For the entry fee, investors get to see Gino back in action, and a chance to share in what may be a chance to strike it rich.
When talking to an operative of MiningNews.net this week, Gino described Mt Kasi as "elephant country", or a place to find really, really big gold deposits.
Dryblower wishes Gino and all who sail in the good ship Burdekin the best of luck. There is no doubt that gold will be found at Mt Kasi. The trick will be in finding enough, and hoping that Fiji can remain stable for a profitable mine to be developed.
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