reopening Panguna copper mine, page-12

Plough. If you cruise through PNG, the local use the same methods as the Victorian gold rush of 1850s. Sluce boxes and pans. Also, in some areas, the gold is very chucky so it can be seen with digging and collected. I doubt many explosives would be used in these small mining operations. I had a mate who had a 20-30 man operation and didn't use explosives. What is already happening in bougainville is more small scale that than. Literally man-for-himself or may be a family group. If you scale up slightly from a sluce, you get larger trummels working and diggers ripping apart a slow moving part of an old river bed. Cause of the huge rains, the river beds are massive yet the river is, for most part, a smaller trickle in the middle.

You are spot on regarding the Niton tester. After my mate (the one with the 20-30 man operation) got all his gear nicked when he was thrown in prison (corruptly to take his equiptment) we looked into buying a testing gun (ie, Niton) and setting up shop in Buka (north Bougainvill) where I have a few connections. There are a few indian/chinese gold buyers there but the locals would rather deal with Aussies than them (im not being racist, thats just how it is). The margins are massive. Any margins on the remote islands are massive (from toothpaste to fuel) as it usually passes through multiple hands. The hard part of it all is getting a license to sell gold (not buy it). There are minimal licenses and so gold gets exported (often to the mint in Perth) by a small handful of players. If you didn't have the export license you'd need to sell to one of these guys. My mate was in the process of getting one of these license.

Im back in Australia now, but will no doubt head back to PNG for business. There are plenty of opportunites.