Today (4 August) thousands of mining delegates descend on Kalgoorlie, Western Australia for day one of the annual Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum.
Running from 4-6 August, Mining.com.au is again attending in what is the 34th instalment of the annual mining talkfest.
For the first time, the keynote will take the form of a panel discussion, including Dr Chris Keefer, a Canadian emergency physician, Host of the Decouple podcast, and President of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, alongside Aidan Morrison, Director of Energy Research at the Centre for Independent Studies.
The panel will be moderated by Tom Switzer, an Australian political writer and Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies.
There are about 160 exhibitors at this year’s event and delegates include miners, explorers, brokers, bankers, investors, financiers and mining service industries from around the world.
Attendance for the 2024 event was 2,700.
The event provides an opportunity for industry professionals to meet and network, visit regional mine sites, engage with media, raise finance, invest in projects and generally engage with the resources sector at an executive level in a mining community setting, Kalgoorlie, the unofficial gold mining capital of Australia.
In July 2024, the Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum brought in new equity partners into the business, including Chairman Jim Walker, Event Director Suzanne Christie, and Event Logistics Manager Gavin Everett, as reported by Mining.com.au.
The new equity partners also included three mining sector professionals – Stuart Tonkin, Mark Clark, and Darren Martin.
Then owners Myles Ertzen and Sharon Giorgetta retained a significant stake in the business and continue to have active roles in running the annual event.
Digging deeper
Why is Diggers & Dealers held in Kalgoorlie?
In the winter of 1893, Irish prospectors Paddy Hannan, Thomas Flanagan, and Daniel Shea were traversing near the present site of the historic Mt Charlotte gold mine in Western Australia when they noticed some flickering in the area.
Several days later on 17 June, Hannan filed a reward claim for the gold found, leading to hundreds of people to swarm the area in search of the precious metal.
And Hannan’s Find – later renamed Kalgoorlie – was born. Just weeks after Hannan’s Find was pegged, South Australian prospectors Will Brookman and Sam Pearce would peg the Ivanhoe and Great Boulder leases.
A decade after Hannan’s Find was pegged in 1903 the Kalgoorlie School of Mines (now the Western Australian School of Mines) opened in Kalgoorlie. The school is relocated from Coolgardie where it was originally opened in 1901.
In 1929, a copper statue of Paddy Hannan was unveiled at the corner of Hannan and Wilson streets. The original statue is now housed in the Kalgoorlie Town Hall.
Kalgoorlie is also home to the Super Pit – one of Australia’s largest open pit gold mines. The operation is a world-class asset located adjacent to Kalgoorlie-Boulder some 600km east of Perth.
The Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) was originally formed to manage the KCGM operations, which include the Fimiston Open Pit (Super Pit), Mt Charlotte Underground Mine, and the Fimiston and Gidji Processing Plants.
The Golden Mile is one of the richest gold deposits in the world, producing more than 60 million ounces of gold.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au & WASM
