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What was your upbringing like?
I was brought up in New Zealand, and went to school there. I had
a very happy upbringing with boats and fishing, rugby, and all the
outdoorsy sorts of things that New Zealand kids do. Right from day
one, my brother and I started collecting stuff: fossils and rocks. We
actually set up our own private museum, which ended up being
quite popular. It was this room jammed full of objects that we
had collected. And people started donating objects from Egyptian
artefacts and old Roman coins to Aboriginal and Maori artefacts,
rocks and fossils. That kicked off this lifelong interest in finding
and collecting things.
My brother, Neil, is a well-known jeweller and gemologist. He
lives in New Zealand, and he’s probably one of the better-known
carvers of Jade. He does these exquisite works, and has clients all
over the world. It’s not very lucrative – it’s a labour of love, but
he’s very good at what he does. He loves going down to the South
Island, as we used to, collecting greenstone (or jade as it’s now
called) and polishing it. This early connection with rocks led into
jewellery for him, and in my case into exploration and mining.
Is that artistic bent something that you have?
I think it helps to have a slightly creative flair. My background
is a geologist, and geologists tend to think in three-dimensions,
and try and look at things not just on a map in a two-dimensional
sense. Ore bodies are very tricky things to find. You have to try to
outsmart them and figure out where they could be! Most geologists
have that creative streak through them.
Please paint us a mental picture of your
family house.
It was a beautiful house, architecturally. It was built in the early
1900s, and was an outstanding design for its time, with a very
unusual curved roof. My mother was a collector of antiques, which
many people did in those days (the 60s and 70s). She was English,
and met my father at the end of WWII. They decided England was
pretty tough after the war, so they decided to move and ended up
in New Zealand. Collecting was very exciting for them, and that’s
filtered all the way through our family.
I studied geology at Auckland University, but as a geologist
it’s hard to earn a living in New Zealand. So 33 years ago, I
decided it was time to go out into the world and earn a living.
I joined the exploration industry and have now been involved
in many cycles of boom and bust, in base metals and gold all
over Australia.
How old were you when you moved to Australia,
and what got you started in mining?
I’m 58 today, so probably 23 or 24. I started work in South
Australia as a field technician, starting from grass roots with a
French oil company called Aquitaine. They were also exploring for
base metals in the Kimberley, which really was a pioneering town
at the time. We had a fantastic three years up there; it’s a great
part of the world.
Aquitaine was looking for oil in the Bonaparte Basin in the late
60s when they stumbled across outcrops with galena, which is
lead mineralization. They
suddenly realised they were
in the right place but for the
wrong commodity – which
is often the case. Aquitaine
stopped
exploring
for
oil and started a 10-year
operation exploring for lead
and zinc and silver, so I was
part of that for three years.
Being a French company,
everything was done with
great style. The head office
was in North Sydney and
they had an apartment for
their geologists in Sydney,
and they used to fly us
back business class from
Kununurra (not fly-in-fly-
out - you’d be there for four
to six months at a time).
We try to keep a
very transparent and
open culture in the
company. If you don’t
achieve that, I believe
you will struggle with
people from day one.
They would put us up in Sydney, and it was “don’t worry about the
restaurant bill over lunch with the secretaries”. Typically French,
great fun but they didn’t prove to be very successful explorers!
JULIAN SHOWING SHAREHOLDERS AROUND SPOTTED QUOLL MINE
FIRST NICKEL SHIPMENT TO CHINA, JULY 2010
MINESITE 2011
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