IT started as a quest for gold.
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The plan was to rake over long abandoned diggings in the North East — modern technology eking out the remnants of the 1850s gold rush.
It was a long shot with some scientific sense.
But what it has now uncovered was something far different, far bigger and far more valuable.
It is the Holy Grail of any mining exploration company — the billion-dollar dream.
An exposed ridge on Mount Unicorn, just 20km south of Corryong, offered a hint of what lay beneath.
But now, holes drilled from a rudimentary rig atop the 950m-high outcrop have confirmed what few believed possible outside the Americas.
A lava bubble, about 300?million years old, rich in the rare and valuable base metal molybdenum.
It is used to strengthen steel and with a melting point well above 2500 degrees, sells for about $US40,000 a tonne.
But Dart Mining chiefs say tonnage won’t be an issue.
They point to similar finds in Colorado and the Andes, where mines have been in operation for decades and are yet to be exhausted.
The Henderson mine is North America’s largest producer of primary molybdenum. In 2007, its annual production was $1.1?billion.
In the same year, Dart Mining listed on the Australian stock exchange off the back of an ambitious project to explore diggings in the Upper Murray and Buckland Valley last worked in the 1800s.
The company believed there could be up to $240?million in nuggets still in the ground.
But within a year its attention had shifted to Corryong and Mount Unicorn.
“We didn’t come to Mount Unicorn straight away — we looked at various goldfields,” Dart Mining chairman Chris Bain said this week.
“Then we started a geochemical work in the region in the summer of 2007-08.
“What we found was ... a porphyry intrusion and most of that is unique in that the primary mineralisation is molybdenum.
“It is used in hardening steel and corrosion resistance, one of the main applications is gas pipelines and there are plenty of those going in around the world.
“So it is a very valuable specialist metal.
“We believe the porphyry at Mount Unicorn is enormously significant in that it is a primary discovery — there has never been anything like this outside the Americas.
“But we believe what we are finding is very similar to those.
“It has enormous scale — if it is mined, and that is still an if, it will last many decades.
“We are not talking about a little goldmine that comes and goes in 10 years ...
this will go on and on and on.”
Mr Bain breaks down the complex set of events all those eons ago with a hint of his 1960s youth.
“Imagine a lava lamp, where you get a bubble of wax at the top but still connected to the base by a fine strand,” he said.
“Now imagine that frozen solid in the Earth’s crust.
“As it cools it fractures and cracks, allowing hot fluids carrying metals to rush in and set.
“It is not a volcano blowing, such as we have in northern Europe at the moment, it would have happened deep within the Earth’s crust.
“It would have been massive in its day, the landmass likely to have been up to 3km high, something like the Andes in South America.
“But it was 300 million years ago.”
Mr Bain said more samples in the next month would seal the deal.
Workers are drilling 700m into the mountain and well below the valley floor (Corryong is 500m above sea level) to establish the uniformity of the find.
It is likely a mine would tunnel into Mount Unicorn at the base of the valley, the goings on beneath the volcanic outcrop hidden from view.
Dart Mining’s share price doubled, albeit from a modest base, on the back of the initial findings.
Now fund managers have their eyes peeled, awaiting further confirmation.
“The market is looking for validation of the first results,” Mr Bain said.
“If the next results from this hole demonstrate continuity of grade right down the hole, I think we will see a solid pick-up in the share price.
“The spike was some short-term excitement, now they are saying ‘prove to us that it will continue’.”
Mr Bain says the finds are unique, the test results exciting but mining still several years away, if at all.
Dart Mining has spent $7?million already.
Mr Bain says to establish a mine will cost tens of million dollars more.
“It is dangerous to put a time line on things because there are so many variables but it is probably still four to five years before we see a tonne of material destined for a smelter somewhere in the world,” Mr Bain said.
“We are looking at the very long term; you and I aren’t going to see this mine end its useful life in our lifetime.”