Miners take advantage of the new gold boom by breaking into an early 1900s mine

In pitch black, underground miners near the historic town of Coolgardie in Western Australia have just broken into old gold mines that were last mined before World War I.

The wooden supports still do their job, although they inspire less confidence than the modern steel mesh that runs through the rest of the newly installed yards.

This is Burbanks, one of Western Australia’s richest gold mines in the early 1900s, where today’s miners return to see what the original diggers left behind.

“When they came back [from the war] their mine was full of water.”

Historical records show that Burbanks, 9 kilometers southeast of Coolgardie, produced 324,479 ounces of gold between 1885 and 1961.

There has been only limited mining and exploration activity in Burbanks since the 1980s.

But with Australian dollar gold prices trading near historic highs, old mines like Burbanks are getting a new lease on life.

Mining was restarted last year on a trial basis by ASX-listed Greenstone Resources and private company FMR Investments.

The plan was to establish underground drilling platforms to explore new ore reserves.

Greenstone Resources managing director Chris Hansen said early signs were good, with the deepest drilling testing 450 meters below surface and hitting visible gold.

“Historically, operations only mined to around 140-150 meters,” Mr Hansen said.

“To put this into a broader context for you, a number of other mines in the region will often mine up to 1,000 to 1,200 meters below the surface quite comfortably.

Increase in mining activity

Once home to 15,000 people, Coolgardie is known as the ‘mother of the Goldfields’ with entry statements telling passing motorists it was home to ‘Australia’s biggest gold rush’.

Since 1892, historic and modern mining has produced over 2.8 million ounces from the Coolgardie region.

The goldfields have been reclaimed by prospectors and small-scale miners for over a century, but largely abandoned by larger miners in search of riches elsewhere.

But amid WA’s latest mining boom, there has been renewed interest in the area.

Last year, Evolution Mining bought the Kundana gold operations that had been operating since the 1980s, paying $400 million, a clear sign that the company believed it still had a long life ahead of it.

Beacon Minerals is a relative newcomer after casting the first gold bar at its Jaurdi mine, 35km northwest of Coolgardie, in September 2019.

But already the company celebrated producing its first tonne of gold last year and is drilling to extend the life of its mine.

Focus Minerals, in which China’s Shandong Gold has a 49% stake, stands as one of the biggest potential shifters for the local economy.

The company has built up its gold reserves through exploration and has been working to restart its Coolgardie operations since it closed in 2013 when the price of gold crashed.

Focus land holdings also include the historic Bayleys Mine, a stone’s throw from where gold was discovered at Coolgardie.

Another Chinese-controlled miner, Norton Gold Fields, has also quietly advanced a feasibility study to develop the Bullabulling gold project, west of the city.

Mr Hansen said the increase in activity could be a sign of things to come.

“The junior sector of the market is beginning to awaken to prospectivity around the Coolgardie area,” he said.

Busier than the last boom

Coolgardie County hopes to take advantage of the economic recovery and estimates that 900 additional workers are needed to meet growing demand from the mining industry.

Shire chairman Mal Cullen said the last significant gold boom for Coolgardie was in the 1980s.

“One of the biggest hurdles to doing that is having employees work at all of those sites at the same time.

“In previous years, one product was always up and the others down a bit, so workers were moved between operations. But with all the products up, it created a severe shortage of employees. “

Geologist and drilling company owner Andrew Pumphrey, who works at a yard in Coolgardie which has an old mine headframe out front, said there was no doubt the area was booming again.

“It’s pretty obvious to me that we have a pretty serious skills shortage across Western Australia, particularly in the exploration sector,” he said.

“We’re busier in this boom than we were in 2008.