Peak Hill and Tomingley Gold Mine

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

Peak Hill and Tomingley Gold Mine

The Tomingley gold mine tour was a free trip put together by Australian Earth Science Education and Alkane Resources of the historic Peak Hill Gold Mine and the working Tomingley Gold Operations.

The tour began at Peak Hill Gold Mine, where students learnt about the Aboriginal and natural heritage of the area, historic mining at the site, management of sulfide wastes, rehabilitation, and future mining prospects. The information was presented by King’s Old Boy Michael Sutherland, who is the General Manager for NSW, and Alex, an exploration Geologist for Alkane Resources.

Alex took us to his site office to explain the operation and future prospects in the area, showing the maps produced from some $30 million dollars’ worth of exploratory core drilling! The next large project for Alkane Resources is partially under the Newell Highway, which will require approval for the main road to be moved–a massive undertaking of time, manpower, and finances. We also saw the core samples from their exploration drilling and gained our first understanding of the minimum concentration of gold in the ore for it to be financially viable: 0.4g/tonne for open-cut mining and 1.4g/tonne for underground mining.

Moving onto Alkane’s Tomingley Gold Operations, we were introduced to the managers of the mine–the General Manager, Open-Cut Manager, and Underground Manager–who explained mine operations. The tour of the mine started with watching a gold pour, filling around 2.5 ingots. We got to hold one of the ingots of gold with a mass of 14.19kg and worth in the vicinity of one million dollars! We explored the processing area, learning about the chemical reactions used to separate the gold from the lesser value minerals and processing area.

Normally restricted to the public, the open pit operations were temporarily postponed due to poor weather conditions and that gave us an opportunity to get down to the bottom of the pit. This was a brilliant experience to see the seams of goldbearing rock, which they were unable to access due to them undermining the access roads, the size of the operations and equipment, and the scale of the mine itself (which is not a big mine at all).

During the afternoon, we had another chance to chat with mine staff before a few of us had the opportunity to go into the underground mine. It was amazing to see the web of roads into the hillside and the specialised equipment operating in the formation of new tunnels and the unique carrying equipment to remove the ore from within. The tagging in and out of the underground mine was very thorough and gave a trail of our route through the 3km of tunnelling we drove through.

What a remarkable trip to see a working mine, learning about techniques, exploration, rehabilitation, and to unpack a lot of myths about mining. Just remember, if it didn’t grow and doesn’t flow, it was mined!