TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

MORE than a billion years ago two tectonic plates collided and fused to form a continent.

From The Great Southern Weekender, March 19, 2015 p5

They also formed a mountain range whose worn-down remnants stretch across most of southern Western Australia.

Gold and nickel has been found at one end of the former mountain range, and a small company has bought leases near the other extremity in the hope of finding payable nickel and copper.

The Weekender, March 19, 2015 p5.

According to Bloomberg the Managing Director left the company soon after this interview.

Gold refineries may soon be able to quit using toxic cyanide to process ore.

This chemical is dangerous to work with and without careful disposal, bad for the environment.

Instead, a scientists says they can try an organic chemical that is one of life’s “building blocks” – the amino acid glycine.

It is cheaper than cyanide and can be re-used.

Glycine can also be used to extract copper.

First published in Science Network WA [read this story]. Republished in The Kalgoorlie Miner on 1 November 2014.

While most of the easy-to-find iron ore has been pegged out in the Kimberley, scientists say there should be plenty more in the Yilgarn goldfields.

The Kalgoorlie Miner 3 May 2014 p 21

In the dim and distant past the region was largely submerged under shallow seas, where layers of iron oxide and silica formed banded ironstone. Later, tremendously hot washes of water and carbon dioxide rose up from the bowls of the earth, turning it into what we call iron ore.

Most of this is now buried under layers of soil and other sediment, but outcrops here and there have similar chemical signatures that scientists can now detect with hand-held devices or even from satellites.

Science Network [read this story] This Kalgoorlie Miner also republished this story.