In our early years, MBGS (then Clifford McElroy and Assoc.) was involved in a wide range of geological assignments, in Australia and overseas. Nickel exploration was widespread, but concentrated in Western Australia, and several nickel discoveries saw stock markets booming. We were involved in a project in the Pilbara in 1971, south of Marble Bar, for Kingsway Minerals. Geologist, Derek Devey, and a field assistant spent about four months in the ‘bush’ running a drilling program that located a high grade, but narrow, vein of nickel sulphide. The weather was terribly hot, and for 100 days it was more than 40deg. A fire nearly wiped out the camp, and the early monsoon rains blocked access to Port Hedland, nearing the end of the field season. An old caravan and a tent were home to the field party, and trusty Toyota Landcruisers provided 4WD access to enable mapping of the area. Very large iron ore mines have been developed in this region since those days. Nullagine, nearby had an old mine and for a cold beer it was a long trek to Marble Bar, one of the hottest places in Australia.
In 1972 our main client in the coal industry, Austen & Butta, got us involved in a coal project in northern British Columbia, Canada, where low ash coking coal deposits were being explored and developed. With Graham Wallis managing the project, a team of our geologists ventured to the rugged mountains of northern B.C. and set up a drilling program designed to explore the underground coal resources in the Chamberlain Seam at Sukunka.
The drillers were required to use the ‘triple tube’ coring method, that we were familiar with in the Hunter Valley, but which had not been used in Canada before. Geoff Jordan oversaw the field geologists, who had to manage the occasional brown, black and Grizzly bears, as well as the French-Canadian drillers, who did not like being told what to do by some foreign geologists.
Fortunately, the down hole geophysical logging contractor was ‘up to speed’ with what we needed, as Canada had been exploring for oil in Alberta, nearby. Tragedy struck in August 1972 when a group of engineers from Australia, and some local technical staff were killed when the aircraft they were flying in over the Sukunka area crashed into the mountains. Graham needed a break after the accident, and John Bryan went to Sukunka to take his place. The drilling continued into late November, when the snow started to make it difficult to access the drill sites. An “end of season” Aussie BBQ was a great hit with the locals. Fish caught in the Sukunka River were grilled on the BBQ for entrée, and the caribou steaks followed – all washed down with some Foster’s Lager. A great way to end the field season.
The mid-1970s were a bit quiet for consultants following the “nickel boom”, but our good client, Investigator Coal (CRA; now Rio Tinto), came up with a project that we were happy to take on. The assignment was to go to North Queensland and investigate all the known coal occurrences that were not held in existing tenements. We cleaned up and established a field camp in the old hospital at Mt Mulligan, where there had been a small community in the 1920s servicing the underground coal mine at Mt Mulligan and a small power station. Mt Mulligan is about 140 km west of Cairns, via Dimbulah, a small town on the Atherton Tableland. The Permian Coal Measures are overlain by Triassic sandstones, which form a prominent escarpment and tableland at Mt Mulligan. The field party was made up of two geologists, Kerry Whitby and Phil Jago, plus two field assistants, Chris McElroy and Kim Bayly. John Bryan joined the field party several times, flying from Cairns into either Laura or Cooktown when the mapping project moved to the north. The Client provided two Land Rovers and two off road motor bikes, making it possible to access the outcrops, which were often far apart. Motor bike licences were acquired, and in no time, everyone was an ‘expert’ off-road rider and had the injuries and missing “bark” to prove it.
The old hospital was a good place to camp for the Mt Mulligan work, but the coal occurrences were scattered over several hundred kilometers, up north to Little River, west of Laura and to the Normanby River near Cooktown. Our lean-to tent camps in those two spots had a few extra facilities, including a TV aerial installed high enough up in a tree to get some reception on the old B & W set we had acquired from somewhere. That compensated in some way for having to deal with the numerous snakes that like visiting our home although they struggled getting out of the tent because of the slippery (for them) floor tarp laid on the dirt base. Our routine when up north was to drive a couple of hours to Cooktown on Saturday afternoon and stay at “the Top Pub”, i.e. the one up the hill.
Each Sunday morning, we would wash the vehicles, go down to the wharf at Cooktown and find a prawn trawler with freshly caught prawns, fill the Eskies and perhaps have a swim at the beach, blissfully unaware of the presence of stingers . With a load of ice and plenty of fresh bread we were off back to the field camp on the Normanby River. Come late afternoon, a good fire got the prawns cooked and the generator was fired up to power the TV, and the Sunday afternoon football from Sydney, even with the poor reception, was enjoyed with the prawns and a few cans of Cairns Bitter. This was bush camping at its best.
The coal measures were mapped and sampled, and the client did not proceed with any further work, but years later, in 1984, we drilled two deep core holes from the top of Mt Mulligan for our client, Mrs Millie Phillips of International Mining Corporation. The drilling rig was lifted in sections by helicopter up onto the mountain and with two 12-hour drill shifts, was finished in about a month. Chris McElroy this time was the geologist who logged the core and sampled the coal, a return to familiar territory for him. The drillers, who had an incentive to drill quickly (cartons of beer) managed to drill about 60m per shift and got down to over 650 m in one hole with the Longyear 38 – quite an achievement! Each drill crew was very happy to be rewarded for their efforts with two cartons of Cairns Bitter, probably saving many hundreds of dollars in helicopter time.
