Millions of years of erosion and placer accumulation had put Victoria’s gold endowment ‘on display’ for the 19th Century miners. At that time no geological knowledge was required to strike it rich. Things are different today, with most yet-to-find gold either buried beneath younger cover or concealed at depth in structures that are largely blind-to-surface and in orientations and positions dictated by ancient stress-fields that were complex and dynamic and are now difficult to understand. For the latter half of the 20th Century these harsh realities mostly defeated gold explorers, who instead invested elsewhere in ‘easier’ geology.

Occasional successes, such as shoots discovered in the stunning ‘Poverty Reef’ discovery at Tarnagulla, were reminders of the latent potential. But at the same time, a quiet revolution in geological research and technology was underway, gradually realising the long-held dream of geological systems analysis of sufficient sophistication and resolution to have predictive capability, including for cryptic orogenic gold systems such as those in Victoria.

A fantastic back-catalogue of orogenic gold systems geology was built through the late 1990’s to 2000’s, and the early signs of the power of this new data and knowledge were indicated by discoveries such as Hill 800 and Four Eagles. What was needed was a world class success to spark the imagination and attract the investment needed to fully capitalise.

That moment has arrived, and this talk steps through that process, with a number of key case studies.