FROMROADTORAIL
a long journey worth the wait
ANDY CARUSO
MANAGING DIRECTOR
CROSSLANDS RESOURCES LTD
Crosslands Resources Ltd is a small miner with a big vision – to become the largest iron
ore producer in Western Australia’s emerging mid-west region. It has been a tough journey
and there are plenty of hard yards ahead but Crosslands has shown a penchant for proving
the doubters wrong. As the region’s cornerstone mining project underpinning the Oakajee
Port and Rail development, and the key to unlocking the region’s resource potential, there
is a lot riding on Crosslands. However, as Chief Executive Officer Andrew Caruso explains,
the burden of expectation is just another heavy load Crosslands is willing to haul.
what was reputed to be the longest road-haulage iron ore mine
in the world. The first step was to build a 220 kilometre
service road from Jack Hills to Cue, where specially designed
100
tonne triple road trains would continue the 640 kilometre
journey to Geraldton.
Since February 2007 when the first shipment of high grade
Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) lump and fines was mined, crushed
and screened, a fleet of trucks have operated around-the-clock,
hauling 7.4 million tonnes of ore for export to hungry steel mills
in China, Japan and Korea. The total distance travelled every
year averaged more than 9.5 million kilometres, or roughly the
equivalent of 12 return-trips to the moon. Most importantly, all
were completed without major incident.
No problems, just challenges. From the very beginning, that
has been the Crosslands way.
That innovative approach was again at the fore in 2010,
when the discovery of a protected trapdoor spider species
threatened a major exploration program at Jack Hills that
was critical to the company’s expansion plans. Crosslands
responded with a scientific research program that resulted in
One of the permanent waterholes on the
Murchison River Crosslands has sought to protect
as it plans a major expansion of its Jack Hills mine
When the last haul truck left the pit at Crosslands’ Stage 1 mine
at Jack Hills in January 2012, it was the end of a remarkable
mining operation that some doubted would ever happen.
That Jack Hills contained iron ore – and plenty of it, was
never in question. The resource is estimated at almost 3.9 billion
tonnes. Its distance from the nearest port at Geraldton, however,
was a significant obstacle that some believed could never be
overcome. Nevertheless Crosslands set about establishing
a greater understanding of the spider’s ecology and allowed
drilling to proceed with minimal habitat disturbance. This
ultimately earned the company a prized ‘Golden Gecko’ award
for environmental leadership.
In 2010, Crosslands overcame another hurdle when a
situation arose with the traditional owners of the Jack Hills area,
the Ngoonooru Wadjarri people, during a heritage clearance
survey for a critical water and gas pipeline corridor that was
intended to cross the Murchison River. As the survey party
neared a permanent pool that had been selected as the crossing
point for the pipeline, the Ngoonooru Wadjarri backed away,
fearing the area’s cultural and ethnographic significance was
about to be fatally compromised.
Instead, Crosslands encouraged the traditional owners to
produce another route – which they promptly did – saving time
and money for Crosslands while preserving their cultural beliefs.
It was a win-win outcome that benefited everybody, empowering
the traditional owners and giving them faith that their voices
would be heard. For good measure, Crosslands then initiated
the formal process of registering the permanent pool as a site of
MINESITE 2012
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