Who are the people exploring for gold in the back and beyond of Bendigo? Marjorie Cook visits Santana Minerals’ Central Otago field office to meet the crew.
Otago's archives are packed with stories about the 18th-century goldfields people. Many came from Australia, California, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England and China.
In the past two decades, much has also been published about the 21st-century "rush" to the Bendigo area.
Farmers have arrived from all over New Zealand to create new livelihoods, ranging from dairying, cherry orchards and vineyards to olive groves and fields of saffron.
In 2012, a small team started mineral exploration around nearby Cromwell.
Bendigo — not to be confused with that other, Australian Bendigo — is big-sky, mountain-high, merino sheep country and home to fewer than 100 people.
The other Bendigo across the Ditch used to be a sheep station but is now a city of 110,000 and one of Victoria’s fastest-growing regional centres.
Both Bendigos emerged from the 19th-century gold rush.
Between 1862 and the late 1880s, hundreds of people lived and worked in three communities — Bendigo Gully, Welsh Town and Logan Town.
In 2008, the area became a Department of Conservation reserve.
While Bendigo, Australia grew into a city with significant finance, health, tourism and primary industries, Bendigo, Central Otago’s population dropped from about 500 people in 1878 to 140 by 1881.
By the 1940s, the deep mineshafts and stone cottages had been abandoned to the birds, skinks, kanuka — and sheep.
And by late 2020, the town had expanded as new people arrived to work for drilling and exploration company Santana Minerals.
It operates from a leased bit of land on Bendigo Station, in a refurbished Ministry of Works house moved from Tarras.
This year, the company released a series of increasingly positive updates to the Australian Stock Exchange, announcing "exceptional" and "spectacular" results from its exploratory drilling programme in the Bendigo-Ophir goldfield.
Assays from three holes in particular had confirmed the company’s expectation of high-grade gold and continued success.
So who are these modern day gold explorers? Where are they from? And what are they actually doing?
Starting at the top, there’s Santana Minerals’ Auckland-based director and project manager, Kim Bunting, who is supported by another Canterbury-based project manager, Hamish McLauchlan.
Mr Bunting commutes to Tarras regularly to lead a growing team of geologists, field technicians and administrators.
He is from the North Island but has had a long association with mineral exploration in Central Otago, with geologist Mark Hesson, of Alexandra.
The original operating company, Matakanui Gold, is now a 100% subsidiary of Santana, an Australian company that has a 45% New Zealand-based shareholding.
Before 2020, Matakanui Gold had been exploring the southern end of the Bendigo-Ophir field.
Attention has now shifted to the northern end of the field and about 12 Santana employees are based at Bendigo.
Waihi-based drilling contractor Alton Drilling employs about 18 other people to work on the exploration project.
Now Santana has announced it wants to expand its drilling programme, Mr Bunting needs to increase his workforce.
But he has been struggling to find the people he needs for full-time and contract positions.
He has advertised, without much success.
Unaffordable housing is a major deterrent for people to move to the Central Otago and Queenstown-Lakes districts, despite an abundance of jobs.
So Santana bought a "donga" — Australian slang for a prefabricated house — and put it in its Bendigo yard for field staff to use until they find a home in a town nearby.
Another solution has been to shoulder-tap family and friendship groups from Taupo and Dunedin, but Mr Bunting still wants more people.
"I can’t find more field assistants. I just can’t find them. We need them for core cutting, field work and fixing roads. It has been hard," Mr Bunting said.
The crews working for Alton Drilling are also based in Santana’s leased yard in Bendigo Loop Rd, at the foot of the Dunstan Mountains, but are rarely seen.
Alton’s three rigs, which look like small cranes, work around the clock in the hills above Shepherds Creek, near the historical Rise and Shine battery.
The rig teams switch shifts at 6am and 6pm and live in Cromwell and Tarras.
So far nothing except Covid — not even the miserable winter conditions — has stopped the rig teams.
The senior geologist is Paul Becker, of Alexandra, who works alongside Patra Bratakusuma and his sister, Gea Bratakusuma.
The Bratakusuma siblings hail from Taupo. Their father, originally from Indonesia, works in the geothermal industry, and they’ve both got BSc degrees in geology from Auckland University.
Mr Bratakusuma also has a MSc in geology and was convinced by Mr Bunting in 2020 to put his PhD studies on hold to work for Santana.
Mr Bratakusuma’s partner, Rio Matsuda, of Japan, also moved to Bendigo to work as a field technician.
Ms Bratakusuma moved down in February and to continue the Taupo connection, a family friend, Hamana Judkins-Tua, an experienced geothermal industry worker, arrived in June.
Experienced alluvial gold technician Mark Ward, of Gore, also joined the team and Otago University geology student Joe Cunningham works as a field assistant, when his studies permit, and hopes to join the team full time when he graduates.
Mr Bratakusuma intends to return to Auckland to complete his PhD, "but not at this stage".
"It is a little quieter here. Less traffic anyway," he said, grinning.
Mr Bratakusuma does not get into the hills as often as he would like, but when he does, he loves it.
"I love the interaction with the drillers, finding new things. Every hole is different. We discover new things. And there is always a nice view," he said.
"The geologists, metre by metre, look at the types of features. We see if there are quartz tension gashes ... We measure the veins to see if there are any fractures or joints; we measure the angle of the shear. And we log everything we see," Ms Bratakusuma said.
The geologists also do mapping and soil sampling to decide where the rigs should drill next.
Half of each core sample is retained for quality control and assurance purposes.
The other half is sent to a Westport laboratory for prepping, crushing and grinding before it is forwarded to a Waihi laboratory for further analysis.
Samples leave Bendigo by courier once or twice a week, and the laboratories return what they don’t use to Santana for its growing library of reference material.
Field technicians then further analyse the pulp with an X-ray machine for other naturally occurring minerals, such as silver, zinc and arsenic, before storing the returned samples, again for quality control and assurance.
He has a background in road construction and moved up from Dunedin just over a year ago.
His partner, MacKenzie Foster, left her career in the beauty industry to work for Santana as an administrator.
Mr MacLeod marvels at how his ancestors used horse and cart to travel the same Bendigo tracks he now maintains.
"There has been a big change since back then," he said.
"I would recommend working for Santana. For field technician staff we would almost take anyone. Training will be provided to anyone starting out," he said.
Another job is to cap the drill holes, sow seeds and plant vegetation to restore the dryland alpine vegetation, as directed by environmental consultant Barrie Wills, of Alexandra.
