Tanami Gold : Inside Australia's most remote gold mine | Landline | ABC News

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This is the Tanami gold mine about 550

km northwest of Alice Springs.

Each year it produces around 400,000

ounces or more than 11,000 kg of

gold. But production is set to

dramatically increase with the

construction of a new hoist to pull up

ore from underground.

This shaft is designed to produce 3.8

million tons a year. At the moment, the

mine with it trucking system produces

2.7 million tons a year. that we're

going to gain an extra million tons a

year. That significantly reduced

operating costs to the uh to Newmont

Mining. On top of that, over the top of

Grant Brinkman is responsible for the

mine's

expansion. His employer, global gold

miner Newmont Corporation, is increasing

production because gold is hot right

now. Prices have been climbing over the

past year and sit at or near record

highs.

The expansion includes the development

of a mechanized underground crushing

system, so up to 28 tons of crushed ore

per skid can be hoisted to the surface

using the shaft. The new holage system

will save a lot of time. The existing

truck hage system trucks take about it's

about a 3-hour return trip to drive

underground, pick up a load of rock, and

come back. Um this uh shaft system

behind me uh you'll see it uh can hoist

a quill amount of rock in um the space

of about 2 and 1/2 minutes.

The shaft structure is hard to miss.

It's 1 1/2 km long, jutting 84 m out of

the ground. The company says the hoist

will be the deepest production shaft in

Australia. Construction in the middle of

the vast tanomide desert is challenging.

Getting people and materials to and from

the site is expensive and

timeconuming. The main access route to

the mine is being sealed, but there are

still hundreds of kilometers of rough

corrugated dirt before you reach the

front

gates. The climate's harsh and then

there's the outback pests, heavy

flooding rains, hail, massive dust

storms, and bush fires.

In 2023, a huge fire swept through the

Tanide Desert, burning for weeks and

getting extremely close to the mine.

Mining stopped. More than 100 workers

put down their tools to fight the fires,

and several planes were unable to land

because of smoke. And the fire went all

the way up to those mounds at the back.

uh in close. It'll burn around those

mounds at the back and come in right in

close to the buildings here to the back

where it actually damaged those uh dome

shelters and stuff that you see there.

Oh, really? Did they melt? They did.

Yeah. Yeah. The expansion is a huge

undertaking and it comes with a matching

huge price tag. Uh there was the

challenges and stuff we had to date.

We're currently around 2.3 billion

Australian on this project. But Newmont

says the investment is worth it and

expects the project to be complete by

late

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2026. Miners rise early at Twin Hill

Village where flyin fly out workers live

during their swing on

site. Each morning they board a bus to

go to work. For some, the slither of sun

peeping above the horizon might be the

only natural light they see for the day

before they head into subterranean

darkness for their 12-hour

shift. Work begins with a safety

briefing.

We're truckies. You guys are truckies,

right? You know the decline better than

anybody else. With that two-way traffic,

it is chaos. We know that. Can you help

out the ls?

Suzanne Burke from Bribe Island near

Brisbane used to be a real estate agent.

She changed careers in her 40s to become

an underground holage

supervisor. She says the change gave her

a better work life balance. Are working

out that once you're in and you can

build such a great career and you

actually really get looked after. Um

yeah, the hours are long but you know

that coming in. Okay. Do you also get

quality time when you go home? So when

you go home, you switch off. Her

favorite part of the job is mentoring

and training truck drivers. Then

watching them rise through the ranks. I

love that. I love that my truckies are

moving up into different roles. Sad for

me because they're my most experienced

truckies. So sad for me cuz I lose that.

But so happy for them that they've, you

know, done such a great job that they

I've now recommended them for another

role or they've put in for another role

and got it.

Trucks and other huge machines need to

be maneuvered through narrow tunnels and

into underground

caves. Deep holes are drilled into rock

walls for explosives to crack open tons

of stony

earth. Short stout machines called

boggers lift and move huge piles of

broken rocks onto trucks for carting to

the surface.

Despite her love for working

underground, Miss Burke is well aware of

its risks, especially when there's so

much machinery at

work. It's scary at first. Um, but then

you become very adapt at it and aware of

your surroundings as much as possible.

The majority of the trucks have majority

blind spots, right? So your focus is in

the front at the windscreen at one

little side mirror and then your

reversing camera and that is all that

you can see. So you're very reliant on

knowing where people are around you. The

roads underground here are quite dark.

There's lots of sharp corners and

they're not very wide. So there's lots

of congestion on the road. So when that

shaft is finished, it's going to be more

efficient and safe for those people

working here.

Back on the surface, new technology is

also being used to increase the mine's

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efficiency. Minear is a fleet control

system recording everything that happens

underground from flat tires to truck

loading times to machine movements. The

system enhances data accuracy and

automates data capture to increase

safety. We have a lot more visibility

now underground, which is a really big

thing about our system is that you have

visibility, which you didn't have

before. So, we can see exactly where all

of our trucks and all our machinery are,

when they're in areas of coverage. So,

we'll come up with where their last way

point was, how long it's going to take

them to get to the surface, and we have

a bit more information around that, and

if we actually need to find people,

we're able to search where they are.

Minear builder Michelle Padimore says

the new technology is improving the

accuracy and speed of data entry. Copy

that. Thank you. The mine runs around

the clock, so there's a lot of data to

be tracked.

The control room could manually log data

from up to 3,000 radio calls each day.

That's a lot. Um, I think in order to if

we were able to reduce it, that's going

to give us a little bit more time in

here. It reduces a lot of the pressure

off of the controller and it allows us

to look at other ways that we can

improve and the benefits from that. So,

it will give us a bit more time to look

at different areas that we could

probably improve and little efficiency

things like that.

Miss Patmore says the technology is a

step towards an autonomous mine, but

it's been challenging and just it's new

to everyone and we didn't know what

challenges we'd find. We're continually

finding them, but we're continually

improving it and it's been really cool.

It's an amazing opportunity to be a part

of something from the start and to see

it develop and to see it grow. So,

that's how the rock is dug up. But

where's the gold?

This is the mill where the raw ore comes

to be turned into gold. The mill is a

huge noisy 24-hour

operation. The trucks bring in large

chunks of rock which are dumped in a

hopper and go through a series of

processes to smash them up. Steel balls

are used to break the rocks into smaller

pieces. And once they've been screened

to the right size, they're loaded into

another hopper and carried to the next

process. And in here, there is more

crushing to turn the rocks into a paste.

Then a cyanide solution is added to

separate the gold from the

rock. The solution is washed through

pipes and particles of gold are

separated. The leftover rock is stored

at a nearby dam awaiting

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rehabilitation. Across Australia, mining

companies in remote places rely heavily

on flyin, flyyou

workers. New Mont Tanami is no

different, and recruiting skilled

workers is an ongoing challenge.

But the company is running a program to

encourage local indigenous employment.

It's like you're coming back to the bush

again, you know, and taking care of the

environment, the country for the, you

know, indigenous people and for, you

know, people that passes through, they

can see.

Mia Leatna is from Yundamu, a community

250 km southeast, the closest population

to the remote site.

She is part of the Yappa crew. Yappa

being the Walpry word for Aboriginal,

which offers on the job training for

indigenous people who want to work at

the mine. Today, the Yappa crew have

been moving soil contaminated by oil and

grease and learning how to drive heavy

machinery and, you know, reversing

backwards, going forward. It's pretty

scary, but once you, you know, build on

top and do it, you know, over and over,

you'll get, you'll get the hang of it.

Yeah. For Miss Leatner, the job isn't

just an opportunity to learn new skills.

Both her parents used to work for

Newmont, so she feels a special

connection. It's pretty good. Yeah. You

know, like I'm feel like I'm I am making

them proud. Yeah. and like cuz I have a

lot of siblings as well and they sort of

you know it's like they're looking up to

me now.

The Tanamine region has a long history

of gold exploration with small-cale

mining since the early 1900s with

Newmont's expansion project creeping

towards completion. Further exploration

underway and gold prices skyhigh.

Productions not stopping anytime soon.

The uh life of mine currently is 40

years but it still can go beyond that as

well.

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