mco v heg, page-15

decline costs will almost always be capitalised for accounting purposes in australia.

as a general rule of thumb companies will attempt to capitalised _everything_ in order to reduce current year accounting losses, including an apportionment of general overheads and operating costs.. declines, level / verticle development etc are a given..

check any australian miner, underground or above ground, and they will have a capitalised 'mining properties & development' account, a nice broad heading, which will be amortised / depreciated over reserves and resources.

* my experience in dealing with such accounts comes from a tax perspective, where we have a different aim than accounting purposes in that we want to deduct everything that we can