hello 2mar$, today's report:
(1) have been off of the grid for 2 days.
am now more comfortable at ocean side hotel in cairns after 5-hours ride from nowheresville. back to mineral-barren hk tomorrow.
(i) have seen lots of irish backpacking work-study girls and chinese apprentice mining boyz in the outback gold fields. given the paucity of locals, interesting anthropological case study developing.
(ii) have not seen much of anybody else; at least not in the proportion expected. iow, australia is quite empty - the size of america but w/ only 21+m population, and 25% not born here.
(iii) suspect many of the locals shall be consumed sashimi style, while still twitching.
(2) the gold mines and exploration tenements (i call them pits / trenches and outcrops of rocks / empty fields) were all w/i 1-2 hours of driving from the motel we stayed at, which in turn was about 5-hours drive from cairns.
(i) the oxide-circuit mill is w/i 15-minutes drive from nice-enough motel featuring aircon, hearty food, swimming pool but no in-room internet, no minibar, and no public-space wifi.
(ii) the project would initially simply be producing gold from where oxide gold had been produced before (16-40 meters depth) since from about 100 years ago to about the early 1980s, and
(iii) we shall subsequently dig deeper when sulfide circuit is up n operating on the same mill site.
(iv) in the mean time we must do a drilling program to identify the areas of max interest amongst 135 mining and exploration tenements, puzzling anomaly, and choreograph our program of subsequent digging or tunneling.
(v) cannot imagine why anyone would want to produce gold under harsher circumstances in places that be africa, latin america, or usa.
(3) checked out a publicly-listed chinese gold company's camp. they spent 20x what we did for just one tenements, have set up a containerized camp complete w/ solar water, aircon, television, ensuite bathroom, and concrete walkways.
(i) we exchanged views, and offered them opportunity to discuss cooperation on their oxide ore, info-ed them our target date in 8 months to start operating sulfide circuit.
(ii) but did not give them the bad news, that there is no way they would get their hoped-for and own mill up and running as our facility (only one w/ 700+ km radius) is grandfathered from the 1970s complete w/ all permits, title, and had been brought up to newest standard refurbishment by the germans in 2010 and operating last year.
(iii) shall teach the chinese neighbors (there are two of them so far) all about feudalism, mutually beneficial cooperation, and peaceful rise.
(iv) the china group seems to have found something as they commissioned current round of 200m depth drill program after shallower drilling. we hope they find lots of what they came looking for, as we are their neighbors on all sides ;0)
whatever they found and find, are no good unless they can mill, and so they must speak to the gate-keeper and use magic words.
all very interesting.
(4) mining, so far, seems as easy as cloud-atm extract :0)
my 'last' meal before getting on the plane to come here, in case the plane dropped out of the sky, to remove at least one potential regret flashing across my mind's eyes as the plane broke up
the mill, a/k/a feudal citadel / gate-keeper to the gold w/i 450 km transport range for ores of say 3-23 gm/ton cut-off
what we hope to find more of
from out there
w/i the pits worked on by pioneers before us
and trenches
the pick axe replaces mac pro computer
cyanide subs for blackberry
to bring back home anything looking like not crystals but nuggets
while the area is also know for its variety of rocks, but we need to find the metal; must find the metal, and bring home the metal. not rocks, not bacon, not bread, but the essential metal, that which sports 79 spinning electrons.
cheers, tj |
