The mine underneath Ballarat is running 24 hours a day, with machine operators like Nathan Thompson hammering away at the rock on the hunt for gold.
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The kilometres of active tunnels under the town constantly have trucks capable of carrying 35 tonnes of ore running from the face to the surface.
On Wednesday, Mr Thompson was on a ‘jumbo’, preparing a head to be laid with explosives.
He was working 700 metres below Ballarat East.
Explaining his job more with hand signals than words – the two high-powered drills on the jumbo he was operating manually were making too much of a racket for conversation – he said he was drilling into the rock in a grid pattern before another three metres of rock was blown away with explosives.
Mr Thompson is one of 161 workers at the Ballarat Gold Mine, operated by Castlemaine Goldfields.
On the other end of the production line are the gold pourers (gold room technicians, to be specific).
Once the gold is separated from the ore at the site’s processing facility, the gold room technicians heat the remaining particles up to 1100 degrees before pouring the mix.
The process itself is spectacular, with the glowing molten gold flowing out of the furnace in a thin stream before settling in the molds.
Processing manager Mark Davies describes it as a “dark art” that sees each technician – unnamed for security reasons – do it in his own way.
The pour is done about twice a month, with Wednesday’s resulting in two bars.
The gold room technician in charge on Wednesday said the larger bar, weighing 18.9 kilograms, would be worth almost $800,000.
The output is spectacular, but the mine is also keen to underline its economic input to Ballarat.
Despite being owned by a Singaporean company, senior sustainability officer Kurtis Noyce said the mine sees $37 million spent in regional Victoria, 65 per cent of that in Ballarat.
In addition to the 161 workers, there are 46 regular contractors, Mr Noyce said.
There have been big changes at the mine since LionGold (CGT’s parent company) took it over.
General manager Marty Adams said up to the end of October they had produced 145,000 ounces of gold since the re-opening in 2011, much more than the previous owner managed in its years of operation.
Last financial year they pulled up 45,000 ounces, meeting the “higher end of the annual target”, according to LionGold.
Although vulnerable to a major drop in gold prices, the future of the mine looks secure; with a ready supply of gold the machines will keep rumbling under Ballarat.
