Inside the Greatest Gold Discovery in History: What Became of the Crow?
Bob Moriarty's newest book is likely to be his Magnum Opus - and if it isn't it should be! Like a great symphony that starts out slow, builds up subtly but relentlessly and finally "bursts forth" with an energy that leaves the reader wondering, "My god, to think that I almost didn't get a chance to read about this!" The next thought is, OMG, it's a publicly-traded company and I don't even have any shares!" Or if he/she does, "Is my position 'of size"?
The short form on this is that Quinton Hennigh, arguably one of the most insightful, geologists of the day has put together and test-driven a theory - at first mocked by "professionals" and average folks alike - that Western Australia (WA) having in the dim past been physically connected to South Africa, and therefore having certain geologic similarities in time and formation to an area known as "the Wits" - very likely held similar kinds of gold deposits. It was no ordinary deposit either. After its discovery in 1886, Witwatersrand proceeded to give up around 40% of all the gold ever mined anywhere in recorded history! Can you spell hundreds of millions of ounces?
Gold in the Wits tends to be found in layered reefs in conglomerate deposits. In WA it's also found in loose particles, from micro-sized, invisible to the naked eye (like much of what's in Nevada, the world's fourth largest producer), to hold-in-your hand flakes and nuggets.
Not only did Quinton persevere against the beliefs of others in how that gold got there - stated oversimplified, as having been precipitated toward the surface by a geothermal process, then through the eons, distributed into conglomerate reef deposits. But there's more. Some of it indeed is in hard rock deposits, but it's also found in weathered and alluvial sections, or pretty much lying on the ground in nugget form, often coved by shallow rocky soil overburden.
Bob's writes narrative-style, salty, and iconoclastic - just like the conglomerate-hosted gold nuggets in Western Australia's Pilbara where Novo Resources is getting ready to go into production, perhaps bringing a new and compelling chapter to the ongoing story, proven time and time again throughout history, that "There's no rush like a gold rush"!
I've been with Bob Moriarty on a few of his many mining tour sorties, and I can tell you that whether he's speaking with management to tease the truth out of them about their "highly prospective" property - (Never forget the maxim that "The definition of a gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.") - or chipping away with his prospector's pick (ore hammer), then looking at the retrieved specimen up close and personal with a loupe (jeweler's magnifier), he quickly "becomes one with the ore body." Heck, he's so tough that when he's crawling around on the ground in a mine shaft, or on a reef in bone-dry Western Australia, he doesn't even use knee pads! But what would you expect from a guy who once flew a single engine plan through the Eiffel Tower!
Anyway, I've just finished reading this book and by the time I got to the end of it, I was more than a bit amped up about what - and how - he's been able to bring this story to the public in a way that is at once entertaining, informative, and reality-shifting, especially for anyone willing to question what they think they know about how gold has to be deposited, where it can be found - and retrieved.
Yes, gold can be, and is commonly found in hard rock veins, plus anywhere from stony outcroppings, down through layers in the earth's crust known as epithermal and mesothermal. It can be deposited in a variety of ways - and places - during and after intrusions toward the surface in hot fluids like molten ore - or water via "smokers" - hydrothermal vents that eject jets of particle-laden fluids and later form mineral-rich chimneys. And even today, there's quite a bit of gold to be found in seawater - though no one has yet figured out how to process it.
Bob is an autodidact, a generalist, and a darned-good observer of both the human condition as well as that of how the earth's crust has formed geologically - not to mention what's actually in it, and where the good stuff (i.e. the gold) is located. He's THE man qualified to write about this story and the rogue's gallery of personalities that have walked across the stage to build it out over the last decade or two. He and Dr. Keith Barron (who himself discovered one of the largest gold deposits of the last 25 years in Ecuador), elevated in no small way, the back and forth discussion, on-site research and planning that helped build a world view which fit what was actually going on in The Pilbara. For well over a century, until now, everyone else has missed its true significance. Not to mention the legions of prospectors, business men, iron ore producers, criminals and other assorted social flotsam that always washes up on the beach in these narratives, none of whom who could put together, then successfully act upon what in many cases they dimly understood.
Bob knows how to look at rocks and he knows how to evaluate people. Here are a few quotes from WBOTC:
• The rail crew need only to notice that the pit they had opened up for fifty truckloads of gravel contained gold, in order to transfer 300 ounces of it into their pockets over two days. That information told Quinton that he needed to get busy staking, before the whole world realized the potential of the conglomerates. If one pit about two meters deep and perhaps a hundred meters across can generate $500,000 worth of gold in a weekend, how much more gold is still around there? (They) had seen gold nuggets in the gravel, quickly spent $10,000 on a metal detector and returned to the gravel pit on the weekend. Bob concludes, "That weekend was worth a quick 300 ounces of gold. I'm certain it was reported to the government and all taxes were paid on it."
• Bob talks about the large numbers of geologists he's met and spoken with over the years, contrasting those "who cast no shadow" with "the greats" who "are interested in everything, have a wide range of knowledge about just about anything, and are constantly trying to piece things together.
• "It is safe to say that over the years, 100,000 miners of one sort or another have trodden on the Pilbara in search of minerals (But) It took that rail crew from Rio Tinto, Johathon Campbell, and Quinton to put it all together."
• "In mining I have found that some management types mine rocks, and some that mine shareholders."
• Quinton was convinced that the key to the gold jewelry box was in the conglomerates. (Others had targeted gold in hard rock veins.). The validity of such a "conglomerate focus" had already been borne out in the Eastern Pilbara and Beaton's Creek - lending credence to the probability that the Western Pilbara was this way too.
When mining explorers look for gold, silver or other precious metals' deposits they sometimes collect "grab samples" they run across as they walk the surface and look for places to prospect. These samples can be informative or wildly off the mark when it comes to what's actually underfoot. So maybe that's what my review of this book is like. I'll tell you a few things for sure though. There's a lot more to this story than I've mentioned. More twists and turns, lost opportunities and seized ones than there are kinds of venomous snakes, spiders, lizards, salt water crocodiles and snails in all of Australia.
Through it all, Quinton missed some opportunities that could have moved him up even faster to where he got to on February 3, 2021 when Novo Resources put out this header on a news release, to wit: "Novo Receives Final Regulatory Approvals and Provides an Operational Update from Beatons Creek". Nevertheless, he looks to be within shouting distance of "First Pour" - the initial yield from a $100 million mill that another company built to process the wrong kind of ore, and lost to Novo because they couldn't turn a profit.
If the coup of buying that mill didn't save them at least two years of getting into production and one heck of a lot of share dilution raising the money to build one, then I'll take a bite out of my prospector's hat.
Before you finish this outstanding book, I'll bet you a one-ounce Australian four-nines purity gold coin with a Kangaroo on it, that you'll have become shot through with gold fever just like so many others have. I recommend reading it at least twice, and while you're at it you might want to buy a second copy just to mark up all the important details.
Whether you're an arm-chair prospector, an honest to goodness rock-kicker or a person who just wants to read a TRUE story so compelling that you're shaking your head long after you've finished, you owe it to yourself to find a place for this title on your shelf. Amaze your friends by asking them if they've read, "What Became of the Crow?" Or "Hey, I just finished reading WBOTC!"
Then relax and maybe have a "Barbie" with a "stubbie" or two (Aussie-speak respectively for a barbeque and a bottle of beer...Because you couldn't put the book down until you'd finished reading it - and now maybe feel like you've spent too much time in the boiling sun of the Outback?
See if you don't agree with Bob Moriarty, and Jay Taylor, one of the first analysts to write about this epic geological detective thriller - that you've now been informed big time as to what really took place "Inside The Greatest Gold Discovery in History."
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Customer reviews
Bob Moriarty is a wonderful storyteller and this book is very fun and easy to read. I managed to devour all of it within two days of receiving it from Amazon. The best thing about this volume is that I think Bob is a straight shooter and he tells it like it is. This volume helped fill in some of the important gaps in my limited knowledge of what went on behind the scene which drove this story (e.g. the early negotiations with Mark Creasy, the Toronto Mafia episode, etc.). I came away with an even deeper appreciation for Quinton Hennigh, the most important player in this story. Quinton is Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty all rolled into one. I have little doubt that Bob's book is just the first of many books which will be written in the years to come about what is likely indeed the greatest gold discovery in history. Except no one will have told it with the humor and grace that he has done here.
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Top reviews from other countries
Mark H
Shocking, humorous, entertaining and educational!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2021Hardback
An educating, entertaining and insightful look inside the junior gold mining space
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2021mac balkam
Fantastic about the quest of Dr Quinton Henning to develop the gold fields of Western Australia
Reviewed in Canada on February 23, 2021
