While Queensland’s big earning mining sector is coal extraction, there are a number of successful operations in the gold mine Queensland industry. With a rich gold mining history dating back more than 150 years, some of Queensland’s most productive mines continue to produce gold.
Gold is a precious metal whose principal role is as a store of value. It’s hard to process, relatively scarce and is a bell-weather element for the economy.
In more volatile conditions including times of war and higher inflation, among others, gold is seen as a prudent step to defend wealth.
Australia was the world’s third largest gold producer in 2021, accounting for 315.1 tonnes.
Gold is also used in dentistry, aerospace and electronics production.
Gold mining in Queensland is currently dominated by mid-sized miners.
Ravenswood Gold is the stand-out player in the field. The Ravenswood Gold mine is located around 130km south of Townsville and 90km east of Charters Towers and has goals for 200,000 ounces/year production.
Evolution Mining has been active in both acquisitions and development of gold mines in Queensland.
It sealed a deal for the total acquisition of Ernest Henry Mine north- west of Cloncurry from Glencore last year for $1 billion.
It still has interests in the Pajingo Mine south of Charters Towers after selling a majority interest to Minjar.
Evolution also sold the historic Cracow Mine west of Hervey Bay to Aeris Resources and its Mount Carlton operation south of Townsville, a greenfields development, to Navarre Minerals.
All these operations have grown. Navarre Minerals has announced new open-pit operations on the back of successful drilling at the nearby Mount Carlton United project.
Related: Navarre Minerals hits million-ounce milestone
Aeris has since taken over the WH Patterson-owned Round Oak Minerals with its tenements in North-West Queensland around Cloncurry.
North and Central Queensland are peppered with junior miners bringing gold mining operations to life.
Savannah Goldfields recently restarted the Georgetown processing plant, where it is processing ore from North Queensland’s Agate Creek gold mine.
Meanwhile, GBM Resources has been building its Drummond Basin gold footprint. Its combined resources within the Twin Hills / Yandan / Mount Coolon projects total more than 40 million tonnes (for more than 1.6 million oz gold).
And Tombola Gold kicked off processing in late 2022 at the refurbished Great Australian Mine plant in Cloncurry as it advances its Mount Freda gold complex.
Pacgold was the best performing gold IPO on the ASX for the 2021-22 financial year, thanks to a high-grade gold discovery at its 100 per cent owned Alice River Gold Project in North Queensland.
Sunshine Gold, active in the ‘golden’ corridor between Ravenswood and Mount Leyshon, and Superior Resources, operating in the Greenvale district north-west of Charters Towers, are examples of the intense exploration activity underway in the Queensland mining sector.
QMines is among the highest profile juniors in Central Queensland and is building on its flagship project at Mount Chalmers south-west of Rockhampton.
Related: Sunshine Gold expands its options with Rockfire Resources JV
Gold has been pivotal in the development of the Queensland economy.
Small gold alluvial deposits were discovered across the Darling Downs starting at Warwick in 1851 preceding the first gold rush in Queensland at Canoona, which was to become Rockhampton, in 1858.
It was a ‘duffer rush’ which attracted 15,000 miners, suppliers and their families but failed to provide for an ongoing industry. There were a number of smaller finds in the region over the next two decades.
This did herald the discovery of gold in Mount Morgan west of Rockhampton in 1882. It closed in 1990 having produced 250 tonnes of gold and 360,000 tonnes of copper.
Mount Morgan has new life with the announcement that the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund will invest $66m into a Heritage Minerals project to reprocess tailings on the site. It’s expected to produce 7.5 tonnes of gold and 5,600 tonnes of copper.
The 1880s saw gold discovered in the Cape River goldfield near Pentland south west of Charters Towers.
This was prescient and subsequent mining in Charters Towers is reported to have yielded an estimated that 6 million ounces of gold in the first 40 to 50 years of operations from the late 1880s
The town prospered. It had its own stock exchange and locals dubbed it ‘The World’, as there was no need to go anywhere else.
Some of the great gold mines in North Queensland contributing to the region’s reputation included Mount Leyshon, Red Dome and Kidston.
While there are other significant finds including the Palmer and Gilbert Rivers, the history of gold mining in Queensland does tip its hat to the Gympie Goldfield which was declared in 1868.
The state was in dire economic circumstances at the time and returns from the fields earned Gympie the name, ’The town that saved Queensland.’
iQ Industry Queensland partners with mining supply chain professionals to provide the latest news and resources on Queensland gold mining.
The information, news and updates we deliver are designed to help your operation stay on top of the latest developments and get involved with the growing industry of mining in Queensland.
The development of a gold mine is a cycle of exploration, mining, processing, rehabilitation and closure.
Exploration is the science of interpolating data from various sources that may infer the presence of a mineral resource. These sources range from surface samples and historical reference to drilling.
What follow is a process of characterisation to identify the level of confidence in the target.
Outcropping deposits are today more likely to have been surveyed and there is a greater reliance on technology to identify reserves ‘at depth’.
The use of either open-cut or underground mining depends on the resource model. What follows is a development cycle of drilling, blasting, bogging and ground support.
The gold ore then follows a process that progressively separates the element sometimes apparent in the low single figures per tonne of ore mined.
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