… wake up in bed sweating and tossing. It’s a nightmare, but a familiar one.

 The incident that sparked this trauma took place over 50 years ago.

Five am, Saturday 6^th July 1968.

Thirty-six men quietly assemble at the government wharf, near the Provincial capital of Kieta on the southeast coast of Bougainville Island. Most are uniformed and steel-helmeted members of the Royal Papua Niugini Constabulary, all armed with wooden pickaxe handles. An unfit-looking Inspector from Melbourne and a grizzled old Sergeant from Mt Hagen, armed with pump-action shotguns and side arms, lead the uniformed force. In overall charge is a young Australian civilian Patrol Officer, known in Papua Niugini as a “Kiap”. Tied to the wharf behind the group, with its strange profile becoming clearer as the tropical dawn creeps in, is the MV Craestar, a 25 m long exploration ship owned by Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia[1] Exploration (CRAE). From the ship, three company geologists – armed with geology hammers – join the group. They are Warren Atkinson (the Senior Geologist), Geoff Scott and I. Once assembled, we board open-topped trucks or light four-wheel-drive vehicles and set off along the rutted coast road. We face two hours driving on ever smaller tracks followed by a two-hour march on jungle paths before we arrive at our destination – a village deep in the interior, about 10 km to the SE of the porphyry copper-gold prospect of Panguna, then at advanced feasibility stage.

As you have probably guessed, we were expecting trouble.

 The MV Craestar tied to the Government wharf near Kieta on Bougainville Island, June 1968. The ship was a 30m Japanese tuna fishing vessel converted by CRA Exploration into a mobile exploration base by the addition of an assay lab in the hold and a helicopter pad and extra cabins at the stern. We liked to think of it as the world’s smallest aircraft carrier. From my 1968 sketchbook.

The Back Story

 That trouble had been brewing for a couple of years. The Panguna deposit was found by CRA in 1964 near the crest of the Crown Prince Range which forms the central spine of Bougainville Island. By 1968, through a massive drilling campaign, CRA had defined a giant open-pitable porphyry copper-gold deposit. The company needed to acquire land for mine, roads, port, and townships. The Australian colonial administration oversaw the land purchases, restricting prices so as not to upset existing stakeholders in the coastal copra industry. Subsistence farmers in and around Panguna thus saw land worth billions of dollars in contained metal value being taken from them and compensation offered based on its value in growing coconuts, the whole issue being exacerbated by long-held political resentment in Bougainville Island to rule from Port Moresby on the PNG mainland.

Underemployed and unsophisticated young men muttered about Bougainville independence and play-trained in the forest with mock wooden rifles.  I was told that only a few months before I arrived, a Kiap had been ambushed in a remote jungle area and hacked to death with machetes [2]. Before the 1968 field season, the Australian colonial administration held meetings with village leaders to explain the CRAE stream-sediment sampling program that was planned for that year throughout the island. Most islanders welcomed the incoming exploration team from the Craestar – they wanted a mine to be found in their district that would bring infrastructure and jobs. Throughout Bougainville, this friendliness was our usual experience. Many times, our helicopter could barely take off from the ground by the weight of baskets of local produce (pineapple, citrus, banana, melon, sweet potato, corn) tied to our skids, which we were unable to refuse without giving offence. But in an area of 10-15 km radius around Panguna, many locals resolved that they would repel any incursions by CRA explorers. In the event, we geologists, using a helicopter to leapfrog each other up and down the drainage to collect stream sediment samples, managed to pass through the country so quickly that we were usually gone by the time local villagers were able to organise, or even be aware of our presence on the ground. That is, until…

Friday 5^th of July, 1968

On this day, Warren, Geoff, and I landed in some overgrown native gardens near a large village located about 10 km SW of Panguna. Anticipating potential trouble, Warren and Geoff headed off to wet sieve a -80-mesh silt sample from the bank of a small river which flowed past the village. I undertook the safer task – as we thought – of sampling a small tributary stream that flowed in from the jungle. This involved following a forest track that ran along the bank of the stream to collect a sample upstream from its confluence. The track was faint and overgrown, constantly looping away from the stream to bypass fallen trees, thickets of thorn or overgrown gutters. I had to travel at least a kilometer before I found a suitable sample site. As I was kneeling in the stream bed, angry shouts suddenly broke out behind me. Three men stood on the bank, brandishing machetes. Their rapid Pidgin English was beyond my limited command of the language, but their message was very clear, and Anglo-Saxon swear words are a universal language.

 No kissim sample long dis pela ples!

 Itambu! [3]

 Fuck off long Australia!

It was clear they were not happy. I made an exaggerated pantomime of dumping my sample back into the stream, waved my hands in what I hoped were apologetic and deprecatory gestures, and hurried back the way I had come. The men followed close behind, continuing to harangue and swear at me, flicking branches onto the back of my head and shoulders to hurry me along. I thought of the Kiap, hacked to death just a few months before in circumstances very much like my own. If attacked, my geology pick would be a poor defensive weapon. As unobtrusively as I could, I slipped my hand into my shoulder bag and hooked a finger into the ring-pull ignition of a rocket-propelled parachute flare. We always carried a couple of these flares as part of our emergency equipment to signal to the helicopter from the ground: fired vertically, the device ignited and released a rocket that, with impressive noise, smoke, and showers of sparks, shot 100-150 m into the air before releasing a bright magnesium flare to slowly descend on a parachute. I hoped that, fired horizontally, it would create enough confusion and noise for me to escape. A smoke flare would have been better – we usually carried them too, but I had none with me that day. I was not optimistic: fired too early it might escalate a threatened attack into a genuine deadly one; but waiting for a deadly attack would probably be too late. In any case, there was no guarantee that my one-shot horizontal missile, even if I was given the chance to fire it, would have worked as I hoped. Thankfully, although the aggression continued at the same level, I did not have to make that choice. After twenty minutes of pure terror, I made it safely back to the clearing by the main river.

 I had been away for over an hour. At the helicopter, Warren, Geoff, and the pilot had been waiting with increasing anxiety for my return. They themselves had not got far, having almost immediately been chased back to the landing site by a large crowd of village men who were now surrounding the helicopter. My three aggressors joined this crowd and added their voices to the cacophony of angry shouts and calls.

We quickly flew off, glad to get away so easily and, in my case, to be still alive.

Once safely landed on the ship at the government wharf, Warren hurried off to Kieta to inform the District Commissioner of what had happened. It was determined that we must go back to the village – this time with police protection. The Commissioner had over 50 riot police housed in nearby barracks at his disposal. They had been flown in at the beginning of the season from New Britain and the PNG mainland for just such an eventuality. Government authority had to be maintained: CRAE had to be seen to take a sample at the site where Warren and Geoff had been repulsed that day. Thankfully, my own sample did not need to be retaken because, although I had made a show of emptying it back into the stream, there was enough fine silt still adhering to the paper sample packet to allow a full suite of assays to be made.

A confrontation near the Panguna Copper prospect between Bougainville villagers and geologists from the MV Craestar. It took place a few days before the incident described in this story. The spokesman in the white T-shirt, probably an agitator from outside the area, spoke good English and is making forceful points about land rights and expropriation. In this instance, we were eventually given grudging permission to collect our samples. The dark skin colour and fine physique are typical of the inhabitants of Bougainville. Photo by author.

The Following day, Saturday 6^th July

 A long file of armed men climbs steadily into the mountains along a narrow foot track. The Kiap leads, followed by Warren, Geoff, and I, then the Sergeant at the head of his 30 men, many of whom are soon limping due to a recent issue of new boots. The Inspector from Melbourne brings up the rear. As we pass each village, crowds of locals appear: men, women and children, the numbers swelling until at least 200 people are advancing through the jungle and into the hills. Raucous obscenities are shouted, but no one tries to impede our passage – most are obviously just along for the fun: some even cheering us on. After about two hours of steady climbing, the head of our group, consisting of the Kiap, we three geologists, the Sergeant and four of his men (the rest of the police party nowhere to be seen) reach the overgrown gardens beside the river from which we had been evicted the previous day. By this time most of the spectators who had followed us from the coast have melted away, but around two dozen locals, now ominously all men, are waiting for us. Most carry machetes.

 “Okay guys” says the Kiap “take your sample now, then we can all go home.” 

Warren and Geoff wade into the stream with their sieves and scoop up some silt from its bed. The crowd presses forward, shouting with rage. The Sergeant and his four men try to hold them back, swinging and thrusting with their pickaxe handles. But several men evade the weak cordon, plunge into the stream, and start to wrestle with Warren and Geoff for control of their sieves. The police are badly outnumbered, the Sergeant unslings his shotgun and bloody mayhem threatens. But just at that moment another half dozen police arrive at the top of the ridge overlooking the little valley, and seeing the developing battle below, charge down the hill yelling and swinging their clubs in the manner no doubt instilled in them at the Port Moresby Police Academy. This unexpected flank attack wins the day, and the angry crowd pulls back. All except one – a skinny, white-haired old man – who continues to grapple with Warren for possession of his sieve (he is the one in the white lap-lap on the right of the photo below). The Sergeant promptly arrests and handcuffs him. By the time the remainder of the police contingent – the Inspector from Melbourne still bringing up the rear – trickle in by ones and twos over the next half hour, everything is quiet, and the ex-belligerents and the few remaining spectators are gone. The return march to the coast with our prisoner is uneventful.

 Villagers near Panguna copper deposit in Bougainville Island try to stop CRAE geologists Geoff Scott (left) and Warren Atkinson (second from right) from collecting a stream-sediment sample. The guy in the hat is the Kiap. The old man in the white lap-lap (extreme right) is struggling with Warren for control of his sampling sieve. Photo by author.

What Happened Next

 The little old man, I was told, was found guilty of civil affray, and sentenced by the magistrate to a week in the Kieta jail.

CRAE successfully completed their geochemical sampling program across the Island. No significant new copper or gold mineralisation was found.

The MV Craestar departed Bougainville and sailed on to conduct similar geochemical exploration programs in the Solomon and Trobriand islands, New Britain, and the north coast of Papua Niugini.

There were more riots and violent protests in 1968 and 1969 before the Australian administration managed to secure a deal with the locals that enabled CRA to proceed with mine construction.

Seven years later (September 1975), Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia as a separate sovereign nation.

The Panguna mine, through CRA subsidiary Bougainville Copper Limited, operated successfully through the 1970s and 1980s and became a major contributor to the coffers of both the company and the new government of Papua Niugini.

But disquiet over returns to Bougainville from the super profits of the mine and continuing political unrest over Bougainville independence had not gone away. In 1989, the outbreak of the Bougainville Civil War forced Bougainville Copper to precipitously walk away from the mine. Rio Tinto has had no access to the mine site since, which today lies abandoned to the tropical rains.

The now largely forgotten ten-year-long War of Independence that started in Bougainville in 1989 and resulted in around 20,000 deaths (Wikipedia) was much more violent than anything experienced by me more than 50 years ago.

The issue of Bougainville independence is still unresolved.

This article is modified and expanded from a post first published ten years ago in this blog.

The post An Incident in Bougainville appeared first on Roger Marjoribanks.

Here’s the thing

You know what Australia looks like. You would recognise it on a map: its general shape, the peninsulas, the great gulfs. You could draw it from memory, probably, and if you did, it might look something like this:

Figure 1

That’s a pretty good effort and would certainly serve to identify the island continent, but it does not look a bit like a real map. No one, for example, would ever think that you had painstakingly traced this outline from an atlas. What you have drawn is a cartoon. Actual coastlines are seldom, if ever, composed of straight lines. Actual continental shapes are not irregular polygons. With some notable exceptions (crystals for example, some biological structures) few things in nature are defined by the straight lines, planes and regular shapes of classical Euclidean geometry.

Now try drawing the same map again, but this time employing an irregular wriggly line to outline the coast and to create a multitude of completely imaginary small-scale bays and headlands. Here it is:

Figure 2

This looks much more realistic. Why is that? Because that’s what coastlines look like (especially rocky ones).

Geographers Wobble

What you have done in figure 2 is often referred to as “geographers’ wobble”, and not usually as a compliment. However, Geographers’ wobble is not artistic license, it is not decoration to make a map look pretty or interesting in the style of old-time cartographers (here be dragons). In the absence of a finely-detailed data base, the geographer has chosen the correct type of irregular line to use in outlining a coast – and that is not a straight line. It is a fractal line. The geographer chose to use a line with the correct  fractal dimension for his purpose.

More on fractals and fractal dimensions later.

Geologists Wobble too

When making a detailed outcrop map, geologists often use the same technique – one could call it “geologists’ wobble” (1)

Figure 3

Consider the map below, originally compiled at 1:1000 scale (the survey pegs are 40m apart). It is a portion (one of 12 field sheets) of a geological map that aims to show all outcrop of more than 1-2 m across within a mineralised prospect area.

Figure 4 An outcrop geology map a 1:1000 scale

It would be impractical to do an exact point by point survey of each of the outcrops in the area. Rather the geologist compiling the map surveyed a few points on each outcrop by triangulating on survey markers, then took compass bearings and counted paces as he walked around it, sketching in the details. Note that the style of line used to outline each outcrop is dependent upon the rock type. In this area, shale units (sh) are exposed as short, interconnected runs poking through the surface rubble: the map outline of shale outcrop thus has a very complex shape with many large-scale and small-scale re-entrants. The quartzite (qtzite) unit occurs in long, parallel-sided, strike ridges broken by weathering along an orthogonal jointing: by comparison with the shale, its map outline is simpler and more geometric in shape. The simplest outcrop shapes of all are those of the granite (gr) which has rounded outlines resulting from its massive nature and the effects of spheroidal (onion skin) weathering.

Examples – extracted from the map – of these different line styles are shown below. The outline of each unit has a different  fractal dimension which the geologist attempted to capture with an appropriate type of line.

 Figure 5 Fractal shapes of rock outcrops in figure 4

Fractals and Fractal Dimensions

The idea of a fractal dimension was developed by French-American mathematician Benoit B Mandelbrot in the 1960s and 70s as a way of quantifying the degree of complexity of folded lines and sheets. The idea became widely disseminated beyond his specialist field with the publication of his beautifully illustrated best-selling book The fractal geometry of Nature (1983: W H Freeman, San Francisco, 468pp).

In classical Euclidean geometry, a line is a one-dimensional entity (1-D) with a length but neither width nor thickness. It retains its 1-D identity no matter how complexly it is folded. Mandelbrot reasoned that if a line were sufficiently folded within the plane of a 2-D surface then it would begin to fill that surface and so approach the dimensions of the sheet within which it is embedded. In other words, depending on the degree of complexity of the folding, it will have a dimension somewhere between 1 and 2. He called this the fractal dimension and the line itself a fractal object.

Similarly, a 1-D or a 2-D object (think of a length of thread or sheet of paper, ignoring their thickness), folded within 3-D space, will have a fractal dimension somewhere between 2 and 3[2].

Fractal lines and shapes are the characteristic of natural objects. Trees, topography, turbulence, coastlines and cauliflowers, snowflakes and stock markets, protein molecules, distribution of galaxies, folded sediments, the outlines of rock outcrop.

Mandelbrot realised that fractal shapes can be quantified by comparing the detail of the object that is apparent when viewed at different scales.

Take the outline of a coast – a typical fractal line. How long is this line? Obviously, it will be much longer if we measure it with a 1-meter-long ruler than if we measure it with a 100-meter-long ruler. How much longer? That will depend upon how wriggly and convoluted the coastline at whatever level of detail we view it, and that depends on its fractal dimension. If coastlines had regular Euclidean shapes – segments of polygons, circles or ellipses, for example – we could step off its length with dividers of shorter and shorter openings and our succession of results would progressively converge on a finite answer. But for a fractal line there is no convergence: the coastline has an infinite length! The reason for this paradoxical result is that the fractal dimension you can measure will be approximately the same no matter how far you zoom down into the detail of the line.

Mandelbrot defined Fractal Dimension (FD) as the statistical ratio of the change in detail with the change in scale.  It matters little whether the FD ratio of a rocky coast is measured on a 1,000,000 scale map, on the bays and headlands of a 100,000 scale map or on a map of a rock pool on the shore at 1:1 scale. At levels of detail that range through several orders of magnitude, the Fractal Dimension of a rocky coast will be approximately the same.  That is not to say that, if you overlaid a tracing of 100 km of coastline over a tracing of 1 km of coastline, there would be a neat match, but the lines would look the same: they would have the same style.  Without further information, it would be impossible, from the lines alone, to say at what level of detail it was being viewed.  That is what is meant by saying that the Fractal Dimension is scale invariant. Fractal shapes have scale-invariant self-similarity.

The map of the rock pool is a fractal for the map of the bay in which it occurs, and the map of the bay is itself a fractal for the map of the whole rocky coastline. Similarly, small folds on the limbs of large folds can be fractals for the large fold, which may of course be a fractal for an even larger fold. This useful relationship has been known to geologists for almost 130 years, the first example of the practical use of what we now know as fractal geometry. When I was a geology student in the 1960s we were taught to call this “Pumpelly’s Rule” after USGS geologist Raphael Pumpelly (he of the eponymous mineral) who first described these relationships in 1894(4).

Figure 6: Raphael Pumpelly, 1837-1923. Geology & Mining Professor Harvard University (1866-75). Founding Member of the United States Geological Survey (1879), Director of the USGS (1884). President of the Geological Society of America (1905)

In Nature, fractal shapes are only ever self-similar through a limited range of scales. There are practical limits. Patterns are never repeated endlessly to infinity. One cannot strictly say (parodying Jonathon Swift) that:

So, Geologists observe, a fold,

Hath smaller folds that on limbs prey,

And these have smaller yet to parasite ‘em,

And so proceed ad infinitum.

However, fractal shapes and patterns created by computer through the iteration of simple non-linear algorithms can have perfect self-similarity through an infinity of scales.  The best-known example of a computer- generated set of fractals is the famous Mandelbrot Set.

The idea of the scale invariance of fractal shapes has great relevance in structural geology, where the structure of large regions (which cannot be directly observed) has to be deduced from observation of small outcrops in the field. This topic is explored in an earlier post (LINK).

The box counting method for calculating Fractal Dimension

I understand that some GIS software packages, such as ArcGIS, provide sub-programs for calculating fractal dimensions. However, it can be done manually. Mandelbrot’s insight that the Fractal dimension is the statistical ratio of change in detail with the change in scale enabled him to provide the following formula for calculating the FD of a folded line embedded in 2-D space:

C^D = N/M

Where the scale is a unit grid in 2-D space, and:

 C  is the scale reduction multiple              D  is the fractal dimension

N  is the number of squares occupied by the fractal in the high-resolution 2-D grid.

M  is the number of squares occupied by the fractal in the low-resolution 2-D grid

Figure 7 below illustrates the application of the formula to calculate the fractal dimension of a line. To demonstrate the technique and for simplicity of illustration, in the examples below I have chosen a low reduction multiple (C) of 2.  However, it should be noted that the larger the value of C, the more accurate and precise will be the calculated value of the Fractal Dimension (D).

Figure 7 Calculating the fractal dimension of a line (click for a larger, sharper image)

Some numbers

A typical rocky coastline has a fractal dimension (FD) of 1.2 – 1.3. Low-lying coasts of sediment accumulation (the 80-mile beach, for example) have lower fractal dimensions. An FD of around 1.2 was instinctively used in drawing the map of Australia shown in figure 2. That is an exaggeration as the actual coastline, averaged over the whole continent, has been recently measured at 1.114 (LINK)

The FD of the west coast of Britain has been calculated as 1.25 (LINK) (3)

The FD of the coast of Norway -  a particularly rugged and fiord-indented coastline -  has been calculated (by Slartybartfast, among others (LINK from p 139)) at 1.52.

The outline of the granite outcrop in figure 5 has an approximate FD of 1.1

The outline of the quartzite outcrop in figure 5 has an approximate FD of 1.2

The outline of the shale outcrop in figure 5 has an approximate FD of 1.3

Figure 8 The coastline of southwest Norway. Fractal Dimension 1.52

Conclusion

The terms Geographers’ Wobble and Geologists’ Wobble may sound unscientific and uncomplimentary, but they describe procedures based on an instinctive understanding that natural objects are fractal and cannot be described graphically using the lines and shapes of classical Euclidean geometry. Fractal lines provide a more accurate representation of reality.

Following Mandelbrot, that reality has come to be known as Chaos – the expression of non-linear natural processes. The descriptors of Chaos are fractals, fractal dimensions and scale-invariant self-similarity.

The post Geologists Wobble and the fractal nature of rocks appeared first on Roger Marjoribanks.

In my previous post I described my encounter in 1984 with claim salting (or at least, alleged salting). These were early days, the late 20^th Century gold boom was still young, and claim salting considered a rather amusing but small-scale misdemeanor practiced by dishonest small-time prospectors – easily spotted by the sophisticated explorer.

KARPA SPRINGS

Two major multimillion-dollar scandals, in 1990 at Karpa Springs in Western Australia and in 1997 at Busang in Indonesia, ended this age of innocence. Although well known, the stories are worth re-telling, and as I had some peripheral first-hand knowledge of both scandals, I might be able to add some additional insights.

Here is the Karpa Springs story, as I understand it from information given to the press at the time and from talking to people involved. It begins with three wheat farmers (Clark Easterhay and the brothers Len and Dean Ireland), filling in time before the harvest, who pegged a Lease on the nearest available ground to Mount Gibson in the West Australian Yilgarn.  Mount Gibson was then a hot “address” following nearby well-publicized gold discoveries.  The ground acquired by the three wannabe prospectors was available for pegging because it was underlain by granite. Granite terranes in the West Australian goldfields have historically produced only insignificant amounts of gold compared to the adjacent, basalt-dominated, greenstone belts – hence usually ignored by experienced prospectors.   Having acquired a RC[1] drill rig, the trio then proceeded to drill a number (around 9, from memory) of random, 60m deep, vertical holes along the line of an old track that traversed the sandy soil and thick scrub of the property.  As an exploration strategy this was hardly sophisticated, but the trio’s next step showed more cunning: they added fine gold grains – acquired from somewhere else – to the drill cuttings.  On assay, all holes were mineralised, one of them yielding an intersection of 38m at 34 g/t Au. The fraudsters then contacted a mining consultancy group called the Aracus Syndicate that included entrepreneur Mike Novotny and geologist Laurie Whitehouse[2].  Whitehouse travelled to the site and supervised the prospectors while they drilled a duplicate set of holes on each of the original sites. He then sampled the cuttings and was able to replicate the earlier assays.  Convinced they had a major new discovery, the Syndicate then promoted the property around  Mining Companies in Western Australia, one of which was my then employer Renison Goldfields Corp. (RGC). My colleague Keith Watkins visited the site and panned RC cuttings from the holes which were lying on the ground. Keith told me he recovered gold that was clearly alluvial and not consistent with the granite bedrocks being drilled: on Keith’s recommendation and suspecting fraud, RGC declined to become involved. However, an Australian Junior company called Perilya, along with their Canadian partner Noranda (a major player with deep pockets), were less discriminating: Perilya optioned the property and made a first payment of Aus$6.5 million to the fraudsters (reports at the time said the Aracus Syndicate were to receive a 5% Royalty on the profits from any subsequent mine). But in the absence of the merry farmers (they were in Perth, cashing their cheque) and their magic drill rig, all Perilya’s subsequent test holes were duds. To cut a long story short: Perilya stopped payment on the cheque and the police were informed.  The West Australian Department of Mines then got involved and, under police supervision, drilled a fresh set of holes on all the earlier sites. No gold was found. At this stage there were now four closely grouped holes on each of the nine original sites. The first of each set were those drilled and sampled by the prospectors. The second were drilled by the prospectors under the supervision of, and sampled by, the Aracus Syndicate. The third drilled by Perilya using their own contract drilling team.  The fourth by the Mines Department in the process of collecting evidence for criminal prosecution. Clearly, the prospectors had salted the second round of holes in full view of Laurie Whitehouse, but this was probably not too difficult for them – in these innocent days he would not have been expecting fraud, and it is easy to be wise after the event. Eventually, the prospectors were charged, found guilty of fraud and served 13 months in jail. But see footnote [3].

BUSANG

Karpa Springs was serious fraud – an attempt to steal $6.5 million – but it was very small beer compared to what happened a few years later (1995-98) in Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. A group of Filipino contract geologists, working for a Canadian Junior Mining Company called Bre-X, salted diamond drill cuttings from a genuine (albeit, as much later established, sub-economic) epithermal hard-rock gold prospect known as Busang. The resulting assay results, consistent over almost 300 diamond drill holes, caused the penny-stock Bre-X to soar to over Can$285 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, valuing the company at over $6 billion. The site geologists, and Bre-X Vice-President of Exploration John Felderhof, reportedly sold their stock at the inflated values: Felderhof reputedly making over $80 million, and in 1997 awarded the title “Prospector of the Year” by PDAC – the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (4).

Over a period of several years, the conspirators had operated a secret jungle laboratory where carefully calculated and measured amounts fine gold were added to literally thousands of drill samples from hundreds of holes. An astonishing, sustained, industrial-scale operation. The doctored samples were then dispatched to an outside laboratory for assay. Such was the scale of the deception it is estimated that well over $30,000 worth of alluvial gold must have been used in the deception. External ore reserve geologists (working from data provided by Bre-X in their reports to the Toronto Stock Exchange) estimated an 80 million oz. gold resource (well over $160 billion at today’s prices).  No outside experts were allowed in to visit the property. However, international investors and stockbrokers (money men, who would not know an epithermal from an epitaph) were given site tours and produced uncritical, glowing reports. With hindsight these were all warning signs, but at the time no one seriously considered fraud. Where that thought occurred, the sheer scale, technical difficulty and effrontery of the effort that would have been required led to the idea being dismissed.

But in 1998 the Bre-X bubble was to burst, as all bubbles do. The events took place rapidly, and I am not clear on all the details (perhaps no one is) but here is my understanding..

In 1997, at the height of the stock market bubble, major North American gold mining companies, including Barrick, Placer and Freeport, became involved in a bidding war for the Busang property.  Each sought advantage by signing up various members of President Suharto’s family or his close confidants. Freeport won this war, but before committing to a large up-front cash payment (which would have been in excess of $100 million), sent a team of geologists to the Busang site in Kalimantan to conduct a forensic examination of the drilling, sampling and assay methodologies employed by Bre-X, and re-drilling and sampling a number of check holes. This was standard due diligence: the Freeport geologists were not expecting fraud. The Filipino site team, and especially Chief Project geologist Michael de Gusman, must have realised that the game was up. While this was going on, there was a dramatic development: Michael de Guzman, returning to site from the Toronto PDAC meeting, had fallen from a helicopter (or did he jump, or was he pushed?) and his body (or at any rate, someone’s body) found in the jungle four days later, partially eaten by pigs. A few weeks later, Freeport announced their conclusion that the core they had drilled at Busang contained only insignificant amounts of gold, and that the core previously drilled from the same sites by De Gusman’s team had been doctored with added alluvial gold. The Bre-X stock price collapsed, the company was de-listed and went bankrupt. Vice-President of Exploration John Felderhof (who after his triumph at the Toronto PDAC meeting had retired to his new villa on the Cayman Islands: David Walsh had retired to his in the Bahamas) was put on trial in Toronto for insider trading. That was the best the Canadians could do as the physical crime of salting drill core had taken place in a foreign jurisdiction. Felderhof’s defense was that he too had been duped and all his actions were made in good faith. Felderhof’s trial lasted for years and, although he was ultimately acquitted, he was reportedly bankrupted by his legal fees. He was still in litigation in 2011. Only the (now conveniently dead) De Guzman is known to have been certainly involved in the fraud. Other participants (and there must have been many) in the biggest mining fraud in history simply disappeared into the barrios of Manila, never named or charged.

The crime took place in the jurisdiction of the Indonesian Government, but in view of the involvement of the President Suharto’s family (and the mysterious Indonesian Air Force helicopter pilot that featured in early press reports, then mentioned no more), it is perhaps not surprising that their investigation was cursory and inconclusive. The de-helicopterisation of de-Gusman remains a mystery.

CONCLUSIONS

During the 1990s, I knew John Felderhof, Mike Novotny and Laurie Whitehouse. They were part of an informal syndicate or network of geologists, assay chemists and general “fixers” who offered services to mining/exploration companies in the fields of target generation, land acquisition, government liaison and ready-made contract geological teams (5). They had long experience in Australia and Indonesia and provided useful services for incoming players to these countries. Novotny- no scientist – was an old Indonesia Hand who spoke fluent Bahasa and knew how to navigate the Byzantine Jakarta bureaucracy. I thought Felderhof and Whitehouse were able, honest and hard-working geologists. After the events at Busang, I have come to believe that gold fever and desire for riches and fame led Felderhof at Busang to suspend oversight and critical judgement and become a dupe for an unscrupulous group of technically clever on-site Filipino fraudsters. But I might be wrong.

Would I have been any smarter had I ever been in a similar situation? I like to think that I would. You may judge that is just my conceit, and there, but for the grace of God…..

MORAL

If something is too good to be true, it most likely is.

Caveat Emptor

The post How to salt a gold claim – Part 2, Karpa Springs and Busang appeared first on Roger Marjoribanks.

Looking through a box of my old field notebooks the other day I came across one which contained a cartoon sketch I had made of an old Queensland prospector and remembered the story behind it.

In 1984, as an employee of a multinational mining company, I was seeking properties with significant potential for gold discovery (wasn’t everybody?). On a 250,000 scale Queensland Government geology map there was a small black dot with the magic symbol Au printed beside it in small letters – an isolated occurrence, far from any known Camp. No further data was recorded. The location was about 200 kilometres inland from the coast, near the base of a Permian sandstone unit. I thought it might be a palaeoplacer[1], and this this excited me because the biggest gold camp in the world (Witwatersrand in South Africa) is a palaeoplacer.

I drove inland to check it out. The area was a rolling open landscape with dry creek beds, isolated stands of eucalypt and dusty unmetalled roads – cattle country, very like that pictured below. First stop was the local station[2] homestead: some ranchers object to strangers driving over their land and can get nasty if you don’t seek their permission first. Their isolation can make them misanthropic, or perhaps the cause and effect is the other way around. As it turned out, this particular cattleman was friendly and glad to see a new face. He invited me in for a welcome cup of tea and a slice of his wife’s home-baked cake.

We talked about the endless drought, the floods of five years before and the price of beef. By the second cup he told me about Scotty Morten[3]. Scotty was his nearest neighbour. It seemed he was the prospector who had discovered the gold many years before and still held a small Mining Lease over it and lived onsite. Scotty had initially exploited the gold himself through a small underground mine before Joint Venturing the Lease to a succession of Exploration companies.  “But” said my new friend, “you gotta watch that old bastard[4], he ran rings round them companies”.

Scotty was a master at claim salting, I was warned. He had several techniques: he would offer to pan a sample from his mine, and never failed to get a strong tail of gold in his dish, but the gold would have dropped from the ash of his roll-your-own cigarette, or fallen from the band of his battered Akubra[5] when he took it off to wipe a sweaty brow. Scotty could even salt a whole rock face with gold: it seems he filled shotgun shells with sand and gold dust and blasted the face, which he would then point out to a geologist as a good place to collect a sample.  One company, I was told, used explosives to expose a new face in his mine to collect a bulk sample for testing, but made the mistake of using fracture provided by Scotty. Easy to add a few pinches of gold dust to a bag of anfo[6].

I camped that night in a nearby dry river bed and looked forward to meeting Scotty the next morning.

He was a short, lean and sinewy, bird-like man of about 70 years, dressed in a faded blue singlet and jeans, an ancient sweat-stained Akubra⁴ on his head. His face, burnt and battered by long outdoor exposure, featured large ears, a nicotine-stained moustache and a pair of surprisingly large and innocent-looking eyes. An ill-rolled cigarette was permanently affixed to his lower lip. A shotgun and rifle leant against the wall in a corner of his shack. Scotty spoke in a slow Queensland drawl. He had a natural courtesy, but was a man of few words, giving the constant impression that he knew more than he said[7].  

I introduced myself and explained my interest. Scotty politely offered to show me around. I could tell that I wasn’t the first company geologist to have driven up to the door of his shack and asked for a tour.

An adit[8] had been driven into the base of a low (50m high) mesa. About 100 meters in, two largish chambers had been hollowed out – a few hundred tonnes of rock having been removed. The rocks were flat-lying, pebbly sandstone and conglomerate, well weathered and oxidised – easily mined with pick and shovel with perhaps a bit of blasting now and then. Piles of “ore” were heaped outside the mine entrance, beside an old rusting crusher and some wooden sluices.  On top of the mesa were signs of previous big-company exploration: several large vertical drill holes with roundels of 30cm diameter diamond drill core scattered on the ground. The biggest core I had ever seen.

I collected six  approximate 10kg samples from underground: some were from places that my host indicated as “high grade”, some from places I selected myself. The rock was friable and easily broken with a pick.  Scotty helped me carry the samples outside where I panned half of each sample in a water trough that my host had set up for this purpose. Four of my six samples yielded a few colours of gold. Scotty looked on, silently contemptuous of my efforts and of my dark-green plastic hi-tech panning dish bought the week before from Prospectors Supplies in Sydney. “Let me have a go there” he said “there’s a technique to panning a good tail of gold, son”. Hat on head, and cigarette in mouth, he produced his own panning dish – a dented and rusty pressed-tin affair – and proceeded to pan each of my sample splits. A good tail of gold appeared in every dish.

Had Scotty contaminated my samples with a few added pinches of alluvial gold? Well, perhaps he had:  although, forewarned, I was watching him closely and could not be sure. On the other hand, I have no doubt that he was a much more accomplished gold panner than I, and his neighbour the cattleman could have been telling an exaggerated story to a (presumed) naïve stranger. And there was another consideration: the hand lens showed the millimetre-sized gold grains had fine leaf-like shapes and a light colour indicating a primary origin and high silver content . Alluvial gold is typically a deep dull butter-yellow (i.e. a high fineness) with smooth rounded shapes. Scotty had told me that he had an alluvial claim down south which he worked in the winter months and I would have expected him to use this material if he had wanted to salt the samples. But then again, perhaps wise to the tricks of geologists (as I thought I was wise to his) he knew enough to salt the mine with gold hard-won from the actual mine?

But, ultimately, it did not really matter. Panning a few samples hacked from a rock face is an indicative test only. At the very least, I considered that my efforts showed the property contained some gold. 

I did not think the deposit was a palaeoplacer, but an epigenetic[9] deposit. That was indicated by the physical nature of the gold as described above, and the presence of pyrite (oxidised) throughout the rock and porphyry intrusions nearby. Not that that affected its economic potential. The host rocks were gold bearing and would have been worth a more detailed look, but I felt that previous explorers had probably done enough to test the potential for a company-sized operation. That is the sort of decision you have to make, using limited knowledge and balancing probabilities – always aware that you might be wrong.

So, I did not try to option the property but learned something of the tricks of the gold salting trade. And I rather liked the old bastard.

CAVEAT EMPTOR.

The post How to salt a gold claim: Part 1, Queensland interlude appeared first on Roger Marjoribanks.

There is a widespread belief amongst people outside our profession that all ore bodies that have yet to be found already exist. They are imagined as out there, ready-made by nature, waiting for some lucky prospector or mining company to stumble upon them and so make their fortune. That is invariably the attitude of Government, who consider all ore bodies, both those known and those yet to be found, as belonging to them – hence they issue a licence to the exploration company to go out and locate them, and when they do, the Government will use its notional “ownership” of that asset as a justification for collecting money from the company for the right to exploit “their” resource. By this I do not mean the tax that every citizen or company has to pay on their income or profits, but special taxes, unique to the extractive industries, called a Royalty or a Resource Rent Tax[1] .

Ore bodies are not pre-existing things, location temporarily unknown, waiting to be found.  Ore bodies are human artifacts and they are created, not found.  Remember the correct definition of “ore” as a “mineral concentration that can be mined at a profit”. The word “profit” shows that this is an economic, not a geological definition. Ore bodies have as their basis some natural concentration of minerals, but once that concentration is located (no easy task) the making of an ore body is the result of human ingenuity, effort and risk-taking (a huge amount of that). A particular mineral concentration can become a profitable mine in the hands of one company and worthless low-grade mullock in the hands of another. Ore bodies should therefore be considered as human creations in the same sense that a work of art or a masterpiece of engineering is a human creation. A profitable mine is the joint production of a large team of people – geologists, mining engineers, metallurgists, financiers etc..

It is difficult being a miner. Not only are they subject to the unpredictable vagaries of geology, metal prices and government cupidity, the resource they exploit is fixed in place, and that makes them vulnerable. If a government imposes excessive taxes and regulations on a manufacturer, or expropriate their factories without compensation, the manufacturer can walk away and set up shop in another country competing for his business. Many countries, desperate for investment, offer cheap labor, skilled workforce or adequate infrastructure. But the miner is shackled to his resource – he cannot so easily walk away. Many 3^rd World countries take advantage of this. There is a great temptation (not often resisted) to offer easy tax regimes to encourage explorers to locate and develop ore deposits in their country, then impose high tax/royalty regimes, or even expropriation, once the company has created a viable ore body and invested major capital expenditure to bring it to start-up.  This is property theft, but governments who consider the ore body to be their property in the first place, don’t see it that way. They see it this way: “Thanks very much for finding that mine of ours that we had temporarily misplaced – as a reward we will let you mine it on our behalf so long as you take all the risks and let us have all the profits”

A good example is the giant copper/gold Oyu Tolgoi mine in the Gobi Desert of Central Asia. When discovered in 2001, the Mongolian Government, desperate to encourage metals exploration and foreign investment, offered favorable tax status for future mining operations.  Once the mine was operating, however, and with $4 billion of Rio Tinto’s money already sunk in the ground, the Mongolian Government “re-negotiated” to secure for themselves a free 34% ownership of the deposit plus an additional 2% “Net Smelter Return[2]” on total metal production. 

Only when the goose that lays the golden eggs has been finally squeezed to death, will some governments learn the error of their ways. An exceptional resource such as Oyu Tolgoi (or a behemoth like Rio Tinto) can stand a lot of squeezing, but what chance would a small to middling, average-grade mine, or a Junior Miner, stand in a regime like the current one in Mongolia? The example from Mongolia could be repeated from all around the world.

The vast majority of metal mines barely make a profit and when they do it is usually only for a few years until the resource runs out or the metal price crashes. It is only the possibility of finding the rare, large and rich deposit in a politically stable country in a time of high sustained metal prices that makes the game worth pursuing. But should a mining company hit that sweet spot and substantial profits start to flow, the cry will usually go up to tax them with a special “super profits” tax.  Does anyone call for a super profits tax for the likes of Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Amazon or Apple?

Who would be a miner?

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 A “natural scale” is where scale ratios, usually in multiples of ten, are used and are expressed purely as a number ratio rather than in terms of  a linear measure.  Natural scales based on 10 work well in combination with the metric or SR system of measurement, which is also based on 10.  Thus at 1:100 scale, 1 centimetre (cm) on the map is 100 cms (1 metre) on the ground, 1.37cms is 1.37 m. At 10,000 scale, a map cm represents 1000 metres or 1 kilometre. Measuring distances on the map is simple and intuitive. A 1:10,000 scale could be referred to as a one centimetre to one kilometre scale, or a one inch to one thousand inch scale, or a one yard to one thousand yard scale but “ten thousand scale” is much the simplest and most direct descriptor.

 The Anglo-Saxon world, even today, clings to medieval measuring systems involving feet/inches/miles or pounds/stones. North America in particular being a major hold-out against modernity and scientific usage.  Until just a few years ago these countries constructed their geological and topographic maps using the linear measures:  inches, feet and miles  - and sometimes even more obscure units such as chains or furlongs.  In the United Kingdom these are called Imperial Measurements. On such maps the unit line chosen is generally one inch allowing a standard  inch ruler to be used to measure distance on the map. A small-scale map might therefore be constructed so that 1 inch = 1 mile, which translates to a scale ratio of 1:63,360.  This would always be called an inch-to-the-mile map, never a one-to-sixtythreethousandthreehundredandsixty map (for obvious reasons).  A large scale map might use 1 inch  = 100 feet (1:1200) .  Measuring distances on maps with these scales can be a problem, for example a distance of  one and 3 sixteenths inches (1.1875”)  on a map is exactly how long in miles or feet? If you have to think about this for more than a few seconds, or reach for a calculator, then I have made my point. Many historical geology maps that an exploration geologist might come across will use this type of scaling.  In the USA, Government Surveys are still publishing new geological maps at 1 inch = 1 mile.

A set of Allen scales offers 24 common natural and imperial scales with graduations in feet and meters.  Invaluable when dealing with old exploration and mining maps.

Working with and transferring data from and between maps at different scales is difficult enough when they are  multiples of simple natural scales. However the task can become a nightmare when scales based on Imperial linear measures have been used. Today the best solution  of course is to convert the maps to digital format so that a computer can rapidly present them at any scale required, but this is not always an option when working with old maps. Scanning old paper copy to digital format can be a major and expensive exercise requiring access to a large, industrial, flat-bed scanner. For this task the use of special scale rulers is indicated. I still have my set of Allen scales (see above) that I acquired more than 30 years ago – 12 flexible plastic rulers marked off with 24 scales that fan out from a common pivot. The graduations cover a large range of common scales allowing distances to be read off in both metric and imperial units. These scales live in my field kit and have proved an invaluable tool over the years when examining old mine or exploration records.

A modern triangular scale ruler offers six common natural scales (typically: 100, 200, 250, 400, 500, 600 and can be used for any 10x multiple of these numbers) and covers most map scales that will be encountered on modern maps.

Another very useful tool when dealing with maps at multiple and non-standard scales is the ten point divider (illustrated below). Once the divider is set to the scale of the map using the bar scale on the map, it can be used to measure any distance on the map, down to one tenth of the scale set.

A ten point divider can be set to measure distances on maps of any scale. Alert readers will notice that there are, in fact, 11 points, but the point is (pun intended) that these dividers allow any line to be exactly subdivided into 10 equal portions.

 (1) If a map that is capable of showing fine detail actually shows many extensive blank spaces then probably the wrong scale has been chosen:

He had brought a large map representing the sea

Without the least vestige of land

and the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

a map they could all understand

Conversely, a small scale map overcrowded with fine detail is also at an ill-chosen scale. The trick is to decide how much detail you wish to display before choosing your scale.

The post Map scales appeared first on Roger Marjoribanks.

The Exploration Geologist

Exploration geologists seek new ore in Greenfield or Brownfield [1] sites. There are no detailed steps set out in a manual, no pull-down menus in a software program which explain how to do this.  Good geological thinking, the kind you get from training, study and experience will suggest a standard way of setting about the job of finding an ore body, but that is seldom enough, especially today, when most easy-found deposits have already been located.  Consider this: almost everywhere you might look there have been previous prospectors and explorers.  They were armed with much the same set of standard tools and ideas as you (maybe better ones) and they did not find an ore body – so why should you do any better?  The skilled explorationist has to bring something more to the task if she wants to find that ore – to the standard procedures she needs to add innovation, lateral thinking, creativity, optimism, opportunism, self-belief, proseltising skills, individuality and energy.  You cannot learn these things, although practice will hone and bring to the fore whatever is innate. They are part of one’s personality.  You either have these attributes or you don’t. If you possess them all in full measure of course, you are superwoman (or man).

A profitable mine is the joint production of a large team of people – geologists, mining engineers, metallurgists, financiers etc. – but the very first step in the process of the making of an ore body, the creative spark that begins the process, often involves just one person. The potential ore body begins as an idea in that person’s mind – he or she has to believe in this idea, fight for it, sell it to others, take risks and work to make it happen. That person is the exploration geologist.

The exploration geologist is likely to find himself working alone, or in small groups and often in remote areas. Senior management seldom bothers him – indeed sometimes it seems that senior management does not even know that he exists.  Even as a junior he might have to take quite important (i.e. costly) decisions, such as where to site the next drill hole. He will almost always find himself located at the steep part of any learning curve. This is not a job with fixed working hours. This is not a job that suits two weeks on, one week off work cycles. Some would say that it is not even a job that suits normal social relationships or family life. As a result, the majority of exploration geologists reach their peak after 10-15 years experience, after which they often move to fill less demanding roles in management, or even to become Mine Geologists, where they at least have the chance of getting home most nights. Those that push past that limit can become seriously weird human beings.

How Mine Geologists see Exploration geologists: seriously weird

 The Mine Geologist

Mine Geologists are the key professionals on any mine. Their primary job, taking precedence over all other, is to outline ore blocks in advance of the miners to ensure that the ever-hungry mills are fed 24/7. To plan a mine, engineers need to know not only what they will mine today, but also next week, next month and next year.  In order to provide this information the mine geologist has to acquire extremely-accurate and detailed-scale knowledge of the geometry and the distribution of grade in his ore body.  He does this through large-scale geological mapping of exposed faces in his mine and close-spaced, grade-control drilling and sampling.  He is responsible for defining ore and waste, not just on plans and sections but also physically, by painting lines on rock and ensuring that machine operators work within those lines. Close liaison with samplers, drillers, miners and engineers is essential.  Because of the huge mass of spatially referenced numerical data which the mine geologist has to work with, he uses powerful mine-oriented GIS software.  Observe any operating mine today and the geologists are mostly to be found sitting at desks and staring at monitors, a task they intersperse with much shorter forays to the pit, the underground workings or the core yard.

The Mine geologist is necessarily a team player. His observations need to be accurate, precise, quantitative and, above all, collected within established parameters and expressed with a well-defined and limited lexicon of terms and symbols.  There is little scope for innovation or creative new ideas here. The data the geologist handles and attempts to integrate will have been collected by many geologists over many years.  All of these professionals, if things are to work in harmony, must sing from the same song sheet.  Understanding the geology of the ore body, its broad shape and structure, the critical parameters which need to be measured in its description (the song-sheet, to continue the metaphor) will have, or at any rate should, have been established long before.  Indeed, it was this understanding, gained through early exploration drilling, that provided the level of confidence to advance the deposit through feasibility to mining.

Unlike the Exploration geologist who lacks any easy way of knowing how successful he is and finds it all too easy to credit success to cleverness and failure to bad luck, the Mine geologist gets constant, objective feedback on his performance, most notably when he reconciles the monthly returns from the mill against his predictions.

It necessarily follows that the mind and personality of the Mine Geologist:

likes working with precise measurements

values accuracy and order within defined frameworks

is careful and conservative in prediction

has a good grasp of structural geology

can visualise 3D relationships

works well with large groups of professionals

likes (or at least, tolerates) order, regulation and rules

can handle pressure and deadlines

does not mind spending hours every day sitting at a desk staring at a monitor.

Most competent geologists can learn to do these things, but it takes a certain personality type to revel in this role. And for those who do, the rewards are great. The Mine Geologist is the key professional in a mine. All mining decisions begin with the data he or she collects, collates and presents. For a high-grade mine with many years reserves, the pressures are not so great, but for small marginal mines the fate of everybody hinges on the daily professional competence of their mine geology team.

In Conclusion 

I have described two extreme personality types: the lone, risk-taking lateral thinker and the careful meticulous team-worker. There is, of course, a continuous range of personalities between these two end types.  Most people, geologists working in Industry included, have personalities that fit somewhere along the bell curve distribution that lies between these extremes. The lone, risk taking creative thinkers are the ore-finders, but most company mineral exploration – particularly at the post-discovery, ore-proving advanced stages - requires working in large teams under conditions of tight regulation and control that approach those of the mine environment. Conversely, mine geologists are often tasked with the discovery of new ore shoots that can be accessed from existing mine openings, or Brownfields exploration, and these tasks require the skills and aptitudes of the exploration geologist.  As a result, the majority of geologists can find a successful career for themselves in either the operating mine or exploration environment, or can readily switch between these roles.

I maintain, however, that the majority of geologists successful in exploration will tend to have personalities that are skewed towards the antisocial risk-taker end of the curve, and those successful and happiest in mine geology roles will tend to have personalities at the meticulous-observer, rule-follower, team worker end of the scale.

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