At 0730 hours (that is military for late-morning) two geologists arrived on my doorstep. This marked the start of an epic road trip. The three of us were to meet another three geologists at Dalwallinu. Five geologists.......one has to wonder why?
However, I quickly learnt that I was remiss in thinking that a geologist is a geologist is a geologist. Glasshouses.......stones (a biologist could be an ecologist, ecophysiologist or functional morphologist). All five were adamant that they each had their own unique skill set.
We set off to look at a great many big holes in the ground on behalf of a very wealthy client that was on the acquisition trail. For those of you that are not geologists, see below a big hole in the ground. At this point logic would suggest that buying a big hole in the ground does not represent great value for money as all the valuable minerals have already been sequested away by the previous miner. Said miner is already wealthy from his toiling and is about to get wealthier from selling a big void full of air and surrounded on all sides by unstable dirt, with a duck pond in the bottom.
One biologist vs five geologists: I was as vulnerable as marsupial mole emerging among a pack of wild dogs during a full moon. I was surrounded on all sides by a knowledge that I did not understand and could not comprehend. I was certain that the next four days was going to be about as difficult as hydro-fracking the Canning Basin with a smokers lung full of hot air, a mouth full of saliva and a plastic straw.
By the time we reached Cue (518 kms) I had audibly ingested as much as I could on the topic of Achaean gold occurrences, narrow nickel sulphides, porphyry style copper-gold deposits and epithermal gold and silver.
By Meekatharra (737 kms) I had developed a diverse range of resource estimation skills and was beginning to understand the practical application of geostatistical and classical estimation techniques. But none of this was helping me to comprehend why anyone would want to buy a big hole that some other salty gold miner got bored of digging.
By Mt Augustus (1177 kms) I was well versed in geostatistical methodologies for the simulation of geotechnical fracture networks.
We peeled west along the base of the Pilbara and then south to Murchison. At around 2000 kms I was pretty sure I needed to embrace the analytical power of Surpac, Micromine or Datamine to optimise all of the information I had taken in.
When we finally hit Geraldton we were on the home stretch (2500 kms). Sitting at the bar in the Geraldton Hotel I felt sure that I had mastered all of the technicalities of what I had embraced, including all of the univariate and multivariate linear and nonlinear facets of resource estimates. I had evolved an unexplained ability to conjur conditional and non-conditional simulations and employ variographic analysis to solve fundamental geological anomolies.
On reflection, after nearly 3000kms, I re-krigged my neighborhood analysis and did a complex wireframe QAQC of my rouge road crew. I concluded, at the end of my due diligence, that when you can speak geologist then geologists become a pleasure to travel with.
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