The timeline from gold exploration to production will depend on...

The timeline from gold exploration to production will depend on the geology of the tenements. So it's a case by case basis.
This is what the World Gold Council states:

The lifecycle of a gold mine:
People in hard hats working underground is what often comes to mind when thinking about how gold is mined. Yet mining the ore is just one stage in a long and complex gold mining process. Long before any gold can be extracted, significant exploration and development needs to take place, both to determine, as accurately as possible, the size of the deposit as well as how to extract and process the ore efficiently, safely and responsibly. On average, it takes between 10-20 years before a gold mine is even ready to produce material that can be refined.

Gold Mine Exploration: 1 - 10 years:
Gold mine exploration is challenging and complex. It requires significant time, financial resources and expertise in many disciplines – e.g. geography, geology, chemistry and engineering. The likelihood of a discovery leading to a mine being developed is very low - less than 0.1% of prospected sites will lead to a productive mine. And only 10% of global gold deposits contain sufficient gold to justify further development.Once basic facts about the local geology and potentially viable deposit are established, the ore body can be modelled and its feasibility assessed.

(Source: https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/how-gold-is-mined)

The statistics given above on discovering an economic long-term gold mine is daunting. But that is just one side to a double-edged sword. The other side is that the stats also serves as basis for the multi-bag reward factor if/when exploration is successful. Aka high-risk, high reward.

The exploration stage is where the coveted high capital gains arise; the production stage is where the "boring" regular dividend stream flows into investors' bank accounts. Money to be made on both stages. All the best.