Foreword
Many years ago someone explained to me the role of management was not that of leading men under harness but rather that of pointing people in the right direction, unleashing them and encouraging them to run. At the time I was employed by a mining company founded in 1920 by an extraordinary man who, I was told, held the strong conviction that success was built upon the assembly of impeccably able and honest professionals, backing them and turning them loose. The man's name was William Boyce Thompson. The company he had founded in New York based on mining assets he held in the state of Montana became Newmont Mining Corporation, one of the more successful and certainly by all measures the most efficient of mining houses of its day. So when in the mid-nineteen sixties, Newmont's then chairman Plato Malozemoff, pointed me in the direction of Australasia and encouraged me to run I attempted to build a company, Newmont proprietary limited, with the most talented and honest geologists and engineers I could find, David Tyrwhitt was one of those men. The story David recounts here is that of discovery, of initiative, of courage and professional excellence and of a team of able and honest people he encouraged to run by his own example.
Discovery is a complex phenomena [sic]. Much of it is accidental or fortuitous and more often than not it results from a fresh look at an old, worked-over idea or piece of ground, ...but always the excitement, that first flash of realisation, gives way to hard and patient work. Always also, new and unforeseen problems and disappointment emerge, confusion is apt to abound and it is then that the tests of ability and honesty, those marks of professionalism, are met by the successful explorer. The other generalisation to be made of discovery is that it most often results from the collective efforts, courage and ideas of a group of inspired individuals.In this account of the discovery of the Telfer goldfield, David Tyrwhitt quite properly acknowledges the dramatic, early exploration of the Paterson Ranges by Trotman during his epic traverse of the Great Sandy Desert, the post-war reconnaissance mapping of this remote window of rock within the braided dunes by the W.A. Mines Department, the valiant and frustrating mineral propsecting in this desert by Turcaud, and the ultimate detection by Ronnie Thomson of significant gold occurrences within the gossans of the Paterson Range. However, the discovery, the elucidation, of what became the Telfer mine was made by David and the group of people he lead [sic].
Possibly the most significant part of this story is not the end point, the final achievement, but rather the extraordinary performance of each member of this group - and the organisation supporting them - under the press and drama of what was in fact a pioneering adventure in an unusual setting with unusual requirements at an unusual time. David describes some of these feats but from my personal knowledge there wouldn't be time to recount all of the extraordinary deeds, sacrifices and personalities which were critical to the success of the discovery and events that followed.
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,
Noosa, Q. July 26, 1994.
Forword to Desert Gold, by David Tyrwhitt, 56pp, Louthean Publishing Pty Ltd.,