Telfer - Newmont's story
'Desert Gold' by David Tyrwhitt  - foreword by Robert Searls, Managing director, Newmont Australia (Newcrest Limited Australia
(A vignette in honesty, but ..."Methinks he protests too much...")

Fig.1.  The creed of honesty.  Foreword to 'Desert Gold, The Discovery and Development of Telfer', 1994, by David Tyrwhitt, (Louthean Publishing),  in which Robert Searls (Newmont Australia's Managing Director) outlines his philosphosphy for successful exploration and sets the scene for the corporate account of the Telfer discovery. The word 'honest'  is highlighted in red.

If there is one thing characterises this story it is the high level of contradiction and inconsistency evidenced both jointly and severally, by virtually all of its tellers except one, Jean-Paul Turcaud, who has never wavered in his claim to be the discoverer of Telfer.  Therefore when one comes to read the foreword to Newmont's account (above) there is something disturbingly Kafkaesque about Searls' use of the word 'honest' four times in the first two paragraphs to describe the quality underpinning the professionalism of the corporate side of this story.  It is a feeling immediately  reinforced by his following view of 'discovery', where he credits Thomson (just newly hired by Newmont at the time), with the discovery of the gold at Telfer, ...

"...the ultimate detection by Ronnie Thomson of significant gold occurrences within the gossans of the Paterson Range"...

but credits Tyrwhitt with the discovery of the gold mine:-

"However, the discovery, the elucidation, of what became the Telfer mine was made by David (Tyrwhitt) and the group of people he led."

This hairsplitting of discovery when set against his peremptory dismissal of Turcaud's efforts as simply 'prospecting'

"the valiant and frustrating mineral prospecting in this desert by Turcaud",

sets the scene in the book for an account of 'discovery' that seems to hinge on wordplays, rather than on the facts of the matter.  For example, Tyrwhitt happily acknowledges that it was Thomson who led him to the area, but says he undertook the vital step of pegging the ground.

David Tyrwhitt: "Well I suppose I'd have to say, and I'm not being boastful about it, it was a pivotal role. I was the exploration manager in Western Australia at the time, so I had responsibilities for all the prospecting we were doing throughout the State, and Telfer came to me through Ronnie Thomson who we just hired in early '72, and it was a prospect that he'd worked on the year before in '71, that he drew to my attention which encouraged me to go out and have a look at Telfer, even though it was very remote. But the first samples that he drew to my attention were pretty high-grade, so they came in after I encouraged them to go and have a look at it. But I did stake the claim, so I suppose that literally is where it all started." (Bronwyn Adcock interview, ABC, 1999.)

Tyrwhitt has extended Searls' definition of  'discovery' (pegging ground and subsequent drilling) to claiming credit for discovery in general.   If  'honest professionals' can equate 'discovery'  with pegging ground to which their attention has been vociferously drawn, whilst denying the role of the person doing the drawing, then it's not clear from which side of reality this saga is supposed to be judged.  Tyrwhitt acknowledges twelve or thirteen companies that Turcaud tried assiduously to interest in the prospect through late 1970 to early 19'71, including Newmont itself (twice) (Turcaud says fifteen), all of them without success, and noted that only two companies considered Turcaud's samples worthy of follow-up (Western Mining Corporation and Australian Anglo-American) declaring that:-

"At that time, however, to Newmont's great fortune no gold assays were ever made.."  (Desert Gold, .p.10)  ..and ...  "This became the cornerstone of our quit claim argument with Jean-Paul" (D.G. p.24).

As a retrospective in 'honesty' and in the light of show-and-tell of dealings valued by both companies and prospectors - "I'll show you mine (prospect) if you show me yours (professionalism in evaluation) and we'll do a trustworthy deal <handshake>" -  this is indeed a curious admission, particularly as he continues:-

"A year or more later after news of Newmont's discovery leaked out WMC recognised that the Telfer region sounded similar to or identical with the Turcaud's copper prospects.  They retrieved their samples from storage and ran them for gold, and several samples assayed up to 90grams a tonne - high grades by any standards."

Quite apart from acknowledging Turcaud's earlier association with WMC which directly contradicts Thomson's account in the second paragraph below, and contradicting the numerous statements that Turcaud never sampled the gossans containing the gold on the dome, what Tyrwhitt is saying here is that when Turcaud brought the samples to Newmont's attention the first two times, their 'expertise' did not extend to assaying for gold.   But when they were given the chance to correct this deficit with samples from the same location brought to them a third time by Thomson, who was already privy to the results of tests for gold when employed by Day Dawn, a company that Turcaud had earlier tried unsuccessfully to interest in the area, their 'expertise' apparently did extend that far.  And what's more, so did Western Mining's expertise, ...when prompted by Newmont's.

Some expertise.  Some honesty.   All three, ...Searls, Tyrwhitt and Thomson, deny Turcaud's role in any discovery - if that word can be used at all in its normal context in Newmont's account.   But questions of expertise aside, it was certainly a distinction with consequences, that highlighted a disconnect between Law and Justice that moved the Attorney General of Western Australia in 1975, to call for a Royal Commission into the affair!

When interviewed in 2000 by Sheppard, Thomson scoffed at any suggestion of Turcaud's involvement in the discovery, and was apparently amused at any suggestion that Turcaud had ever been in the area, even whilst (in the same interview) he positively recollected two landmarks of Turcaud's earlier visits.   One was the 44-gallon drum of water with "With Compliments of Western Mining" marked on it,  which stood close to Thomson's camp and was a legacy of Turcaud's earlier guidance of Western Mining to the prospect.   The second was the word 'Bwana' which Turcaud painted on a rock by a waterhole which he named after Anglo American geologist 'Bwana' Ray Forma, when subsequently conducting that company's representatives to the prospect (Sheppard, 2002, p.126).

So what precisely did Jean-Paul Turcaud discover?   He discovered the mineralised outcrops that subsequently became The Telfer Goldmine, recovered the gossanous samples (spectacularly copper) to a location where they might be more fully examined, declared a necessity for their comprehensive testing, and tried exhaustively to interest mining companies in the prospect.  Whilst it is true that Turcaud did not personally assay for gold nor peg the ground, in the light of show-and-tell dealings between prospectors and companies and the practical difficulties that prospectors encounter when faced with real success for their efforts, and their disadvantage under law that favours the order-of-magnitude greater resources of mining companies,  that in no way detracts from the accomplishment of his discovery.

Tyrwhitt's and Thomson's accounts therefore appear to be a rather strange way not only of denying Turcaud's priority to discovery of the mineralised area, but also of laying claim to the moral high ground in representing ownership (pegging the ground) as discovery (finding the mineralisation), and to finding both lots of gold (the gold in the samples and the gold in the deposit).   On the basis of such a distinction of golds (and uncovering them to the light of day), one might be forgiven for thinking that both Tyrwhitt and Thomson were doing no more than their salaried job required, no more than might a lab technician who, when presented with samples for analysis, posits (on account of his geochemical expertise as a paid employee) that it might be judicious to assay for some other metals as well as the obvious.  Given the effort of the prospector in recovering the samples from such a remote and potentially dangerous location in the first place surely it would seem incumbent on any geologist approached for a deal to bring the full force of his professional expertise to bear on evaluation.  Anything less would surely be a dereliction of duty to the spirit of any agreement.   The simple chronology of events as set out by Sheppard (2002) would seem at the very least to contradict the Terms of Honesty set out by Searls (Fig.1 above) as criteria for employment, and one wonders if Searls does not "protest too much" in emphasising a quality that most people would consider a reasonable minimum prerequisite for any employment, ... anywhere,  Thomson did recognise the gold (though he was apparently not the first), and exploited that knowledge to an extent for which he arguably may or may not deserve credit (Sheppard, 2002), but for Tyrwhitt to lay claim to 'discovery' on grounds simply of pegging an area drawn to his attention (three times), seems to be rather drawing the long bow, ...somewhat.

The last word for this page should perhaps go to Searls' last paragraph:

"I have often thought that in any organisation there are employees and there are members.  The employees work for wages; the members for the satisfaction of unleashing their talents and the thrill of running.  What follows is an account of people who wanted to run, written by a man who knew how." - ( Robert Searls in Tyrwhitt (1995), of Tyrwhitt)

...which might occasion the reader to withdraw and consider in the light of this rather dubious distinction between employees and 'runners' (on the basis of wages) (and this peculiar perspective on 'discovery'), who in this saga were the employees, and who were/ still are the runners, ..and contemplate the elasticity of the words  'honest' and 'discovery' before embarking further on this saga.

Well, ..perhaps not quite the last word.  The last word, because it is the word that these pages are substantially designed to overturn, goes to the respective Ministers for the Public Sector, who over decades have explicitly stated that there is no evidence of Jean-Paul Turcaud's claims, and have adopted the 'default' position that 'posession and ownership' means 'discovery' , but not the reverse.

So much for 'honesty', and 'discovery'.  Searls labels Turcaud a prospector who discovered nothing of value, Thomson a discoverer of gold in outcrop which might lead to something of value, and Tyrwhitt a discoverer (though 'uncoverer' might be a better word) of that value.  So is there one incontrovertible 'discovery' according to the facts of the matter?  Or are there many? You, the reader, be the judge. For this you must ascertain in your own mind the clear distinctions (if you can) between prospecting, exploration, discovery, orebody, mine, possession, and ownership, for those are the linguistic levers by which the many layers of this story are distorted and obfuscated.