Ann: Change in substantial holding, page-4

When they did the original deal, I was actually pretty down on the beancounters at Newmont head office for dumping Telfer, having worked for big multinationals myself and seen the higher powers take the axe to things that people closer to the ground knew better and believed in. So this is me eating humble pie in a way. Well done the beancounters! But it wasn't all brains: they go very lucky with the gold price, as did we all. But good on them: they layed off the risk, and kept in the short term game as a passive shareholder just long enough to take a massive profit!

It remains to be seen whether they sell the rest on market. Must be tempting. But the half they just got rid of didn't affect the market, as it was effectively an off-market sale. Selling any more would cap the share price as soon as their first substantial shareholder Sell notice came out.

And actually I expected them to keep that 20%, to hedge of their bets, just in case Parklands and its potential extensions onto their old ground turned out to be a 2nd Telfer. The senior technical people I knew there would certainly have preferred to hang onto that. But maybe the bean counters feel they know the answer to that now, Greatland having just RC drilled all the ex-Newmont ground adjoining Antipa's Parklands ground, and feel that they can safely leave the stage. And they did bloody well!

But 30 years is nothing. Telfer was the new, big thing when I was up there based out of Newman in 1982: 'Lasseter's Reef!'. But it's an old, tired mine now, only running on a new lease of life thanks to the present upward spike in the gold price. And it almost got shut down when the booming gold prices of the 1980s dropped to $A240/oz in 1999.

A lot can happen in 5, 10 20 30 years. And usually does.