Mount Rommel Mining Ltd. is preparing to recover gold from the sands readied for treatment at Glenfine.  This quite small operation is a significant beginning for this Company.  It will demonstrate that rejuvenation is a practical possibility at centres with similar gold history in Victoria (like Clunes and Allendale).

Glenfine represents a new generation of gold miner – possible only where access allows the proper assessment of past detriment to site environs.  Knowing the facts enables a “design” which from the outset includes provisions for improvements to the land.

Access in times past was also very constrained – result : fewer and fewer Victorian gold discoveries, less and less returns for investors.  A few statistics will demonstrate when this situation arose, and the example (of Daylesford) is given to show that the gold of Victoria has not gone away – just remains awaiting disclosure.

The Ballarat Star newspaper for 1st January, 1877, sets out payments in the previous year of dividends to shareholders of various selected companies.  For the purpose of appreciating the graph below, extracted are dividend payments made during 1876 by –

                        Ristori Company                  £      275           (mine finished)
                        Ristori West Co.                  £  15,458
                        Lone Hand Co.                     £  47,400           (total dividends £237,000)
                        Madame Berry                    £  64,800
                                                                       £ 127,933

In the same year, the New North Clunes mine paid dividends of £6,168, bringing total dividends of that mine since commencement to £516,056 – about $90 million today, from quartz originally hidden 60 metres below the surface.

All the above Companies worked in claims proximal to, or within, the present day licences of Mount Rommel.

These figures show that at that time investors could be well-rewarded from the operations of numerous gold mines in the Ballarat district.  The graph (in red) below shows the marked reduction in benefits to many investors through a decline in dividends after 1890.

While there was access to ground there could be new discovery.  Greenwood and Party opened the Jubilee reef, Scarsdale, in January 1893, and by 6th March that same year were reporting having crushed 200 tons for a yield of 65 oz gold.  This kind of access and progress is just impossible through the maze of permits today.  The same Jubilee reef grew to become one of the principal quartz operations consistently paying dividends.  In year 1905 this mine (quite small in area) paid dividends of £19,800, or nearly a quarter of the aggregate dividends paid by mines in the Ballarat District in that year.

In the commercial climate illustrated by the following graph, Victorian gold ventures found difficulty attracting funds for exploratory development.  In 1905 the then Minister of Mines (the
Hon. D. McLeod) stepped in, to actively encourage the introduction of funding from England for the redevelopment of the Cornish line of reef in the township of Daylesford.  Within 12 months the success of those mine re-openings brought about the financing of vigorous exploration for quartz along the Ajax-Nuggetty reef system parallel to the Cornish line.  Wholly exciting results continued – to sustain the township of Daylesford for two decades.  The work there confirmed that gold mines based on fissure systems, as in Victoria, are quite capable of substantial rejuvenation, with profit.

Any person can make these 3 observations about Victoria’s goldfields –

Who measures access??

Without evidence of assured access, who could say Victoria is open for improved ways of gold exploration on the ground?

Fred Hunt
Chairman
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