Challenger mine

History

The ore body was first discovered in 1995. The mine was initially an open pit commenced in 2002 and converted to underground mining in 2005.

The mine had an estimated reserve of 512,000 ounces of gold from a resource of 1 million ounces of gold at June 2007, this was revised in September 2013 to a resource of 102,000 ounces of gold due to operations and a further understanding of the underlying geology.

Byrnecut Mining Australia is the underground mining contractor.

Nature of Facility

Challenger Gold Mine is an underground gold mine and processing facility. The infrastructure covers an area of approximately 300 hectares (740 acres) and includes the processing plant, a mine village housing up to 140 personnel working a fly-in /fly-out roster, aerodrome, reagent and fuel storage facilities, offices, workshops, a laboratory, ancillary buildings and haul roads. Water is supplied from a process water bore field located approximately 3 kilometres (2 mi) west of Challenger. A diesel power station (PS1), supplies power to the treatment plant, and village. A secondary diesel power station (PS2) supplies power to the underground mine and surface ventilation fan.

The mine lease is located in the Far North of South Australia, 750 kilometres (470 mi) north-west of Adelaide within the Woomera Prohibited Area on the Jumbuck Pastoral Company lease. The site is either accessed by a nine-hour drive along sealed and unsealed roads or by Air which takes approximately 1.5 hours by plane from Adelaide. The main access road is a private road and runs approximately 170 kilometres (110 mi) west from the Stuart Highway

Production

Production figures of the recent past were: