This week in wa – 10 years ago

Gutnick would recall diamond days

Things were looking bright for Melbourne mining entrepreneur “Diamond” Joe Gutnick this week 10 years ago with the scribes of the east trying to come up with a new moniker for him such as "Goldfinger" or the "St Kilda Road Midas".

His company Great Central Mines had, over the past six years, either discovered or played a part in the discovery of 290 tonnes of gold.

Those were the Plutonic mine and Bronzewing/Jundee discoveries in Western Australia which were regarded as two of the best gold discoveries of the 20th century.

Mr Gutnick was forced to sell the Plutonic mine for $53 million to shield GCM from the effects of the 1987 stock market crash.

That money, however, helped pave the way towards the Bronzewing buy.

However, all was not glittering for Gutnick.

His stake in diamond hunter Cambridge Gulf Exploration was gradually sinking into the bed of the Bonaparte gulf along with the company’s share price.

Over a fortnight Cambridge’s shares had shed 40 cents to be at 80 cents.

At that point Cambridge director Brian Conway was saying the company had been misunderstood and that rumours, including that the diamonds recovered in the exploration phase of the company’s project had come from Namibia and not from under the blood-warm waters off Wyndham, were not true.

And while Mr Gutnick would have been philosophical about the need to sell Plutonic, it may have still rankled when the mine’s new owner announced the gold resource at the mine had more than doubled to 5.6 million ounces, essentially a find of an extra $1.5 billion worth of gold.

Comparisons to Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit were being cast around.

Things were looking bright in other parts of the WA mining industry too with CRA, now known as Rio Tinto, celebrating the opening of its $362 million Marandoo iron ore mine.

On the gas side AGL was confirmed as the manager of the $400 million Goldfields Gas Transmission line between the Pilbara and Kalgoorlie and Pilbara Energy contracted Clough Engineering to build a 215 kilometre pipeline from Karratha to Port Hedland.

Ampolex announced it had formed an alliance with Dawson/Brown & Root, Leighton Contractors, Ove Arup and Partners and Keppel Corp to move to the next stage of the development of its 75 million barrel Wandoo oil field off WA’s coast.

In the financial world the doomsayers, convinced the WA Government of the day was walking away from the deal, were talking down any possibility of BankWest becoming a reality.

The deals of an earlier WA Government were also coming under scrutiny with a special inquiry into a coal contract between Western Collieries and the then State Energy Commisison of WA being told that former Deputy Premier David Parker had, in 1988, wanted to reduce the price of coal from the Collie coal fields – hence the deal.

In the corporate world Wesfarmers managing director Michael Chaney was named CEO of the year. In the two years since he had taken the helm at the agribusiness player Wesfarmers had taken over Dalgetys Ltd and Bunnings.