Consistent visible gold in Mitiamo hints at extension of Bendigo goldfield

Last week, mining company Catalyst Metals revealed it had found consistent visible gold at its Iris Zone at Boyd's Dam, near Mitiamo.

The company announced it found repetitive "stacked gold zones below the shallow Boyd's Dam mineralisation", the same structural style as the 22-million-ounce Bendigo goldfield.

Catalyst Metals chief operating officer John McKinstry said the gold was located under 40 to 80 metres of sand and clay in the Murray Basin.

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The next step is to look at establishing a tunnel underground to extract the gold.

Mr McKinstry said gold mining companies had been looking for a "repetition" of the Fosterville gold mine, the largest producer of gold in Victoria.

"The mineralisation's a bit different there but clearly they hit a very sweet zone [at Fosterville] that everybody would like to do again," he said.

"We're all hoping for a repetition of that, but really we're looking for something a bit different, which is more akin to what was at Bendigo itself.

"This really is still exploration. It's a long process from finding something to actually digging it out of the ground and turning it into a product.

"It's exciting. It's showing that there's still plenty of gold down there in Victoria to eventually be exploited, hopefully by us."

The excitement was echoed by executive director of the Victorian division of the Minerals Council of Australia, James Sorahan.

Mr Sorahan, who is based in Bendigo, said northern Victoria's Murray Basin was the "great untapped area for modern mining".

"A lot of the gold there is deep under the Murray Basin cover, but with modern exploration technologies and with modern mining, we can unearth that and start to get a piece of the 75 million ounces of gold that are estimated to still be under Victoria," he said.

This week another mining company, Falcon Metals, experienced their own breakthrough, carrying out its highest-grade gold intercept to date at its site at Pyramid Hill.

It's estimated there is as much gold left in Victoria as has ever been extracted, and it could be worth $200 billion.

"The Bendigo region still to this day has produced the second most amount of gold in Australia," Mr Sorahan said.

Mr Sorahan said another gold mine similar to Fosterville would provide benefits to the local community.

"The Agnico Eagle Fosterville mine is the fourth biggest employer in town," he said.

"The Minerals Council has done estimates to show that around $50 million is spent in central Victoria every year by gold mines, and about $90 million in wages is paid.

"There are very few other businesses or industries that can bring such massive economic benefits to regional cities like mining."

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As much of northern Victoria is used for agriculture, Mr Sorahan said there were strict regulations in place for gold mining.

He said underground mining had "minimal impacts on the environment".

"We require community and government and environmental approvals and we support that very strongly, and mining is the only industry that has to fully rehabilitate land after mining finishes," he said.

A gold mine cannot be approved until a land rehabilitation plan is established and agreed to by the government and community, Mr Sorahan said.

But Mr Sorahan said any delay to gold mining could see the state miss out on the benefits.

"Delays to mining and exploration cost jobs and money and Victoria needs to be competitive with other states and ensure that we can get our fair share of the boom that's happening in mining," he said.

"We need fair and efficient approvals by government to ensure that we can reap the benefits that mining offers our region."

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