Cape Clear Minerals and partner Predictive Discovery have recently ‘intersected’ (read discovered) visible gold at their British Banner prospect, west of Ballarat. But before you throw in your job and grab a pick, you might like to consider some of the aspects of a modern mining operation.

Geoff Lowe is the director of Cape Clear Minerals. He says there is still an element of luck – and an awful lot of geology – in modern mining.

“It’s a high-risk game,” he says. “You can spend a lot of money for very little or no return. For example, we might examine 1,000 prospective sites over many years. We might decide of those to conduct 100 drilling programs. Of those 100 we might get 10 that have any gold in them at all – not necessarily viable, just a return.”

The process of making a decision to mine might cost tens of millions of dollars. Aside from the obvious environmental considerations, the purchasing of licences and machinery, the actual core drilling takes months of detailed planning.

“We do look at the historical geological maps, the places where the original miners discovered gold. But we use a special drill to get down to anywhere up to 500m. We take a sample, bring it up and cut it lengthways to look for grains of gold.”

The average assay, or amount of gold found in a tonne of rock, in Ballarat is 7 – 8 grams per tonne. To put that in perspective, a half-teaspoon of gold is 2.4 grams. Geoff Lowe says that for a strike to be viable several hundred metres below the surface, it needs to return that –  a quarter of an ounce.

“Even at a price of $1,500 an ounce, it may cost a miner $900 to $1,200 per ounce just to get the gold and process it for sale,” says Mr Lowe.

Preliminary results at British Banner include 3.8 metres of sample at 6.7 grams of gold per tonne , including 1.3 metres at 17.5 grams per tonne; and 4.5 metres at 2.4 grams of gold per tonne , including 0.7 metres at 10.3 grams per tonne.