Hudson calls out Vic permitting ‘myth’
- 6 August 2025
What’s the best jurisdiction in Australia to permit a mine?
Southern Cross Gold CEO Michael Hudson seemed to take some delight this week in giving a Kalgoorlie mining audience his answer: “Victoria”.
Cue plenty of spluttering and maybe the odd profanity in Western Australia’s gold capital (“Victoria” can sometimes be used in a pejorative way in these parts).
“I urge you to go and look at the stats. Over the last six months we permitted four mines in the jurisdiction. No other place in Australia has done that,” Hudson said at the annual Diggers & Dealers conference.
“Let’s hope the trend continues.”
Hudson is certainly one who is counting on continuation of what is a new trend: recent mineral sands mining approvals were the first in the state since 2008 and Agnico Eagle Mines’ Fosterville green light was for an expansion project. But Hudson is putting plenty of Southern Cross’s money next to his words with a A$59 million drilling program underway at Sunday Creek only about 60km north of Melbourne in Victoria’s historically significant Heathcote gold district. It’s a massive drill-out, including holes down to circa-2km vertical depth, aimed at generating a maiden resource by early 2027.
Southern Cross Gold has generated an exploration target of 2.2-to-3.2 million ounces gold-equivalent at an average grade of 8.3-10.6 grams per tonne gold-equivalent based on its work at Sunday Creek since late 2022. The company’s share price is up more than 40% in the past year, taking its market value past $1.4 billion.
Hudson says imminent permitting of a $30 million, 1km decline can accelerate drilling and ultimately mine development progress. The company has also earmarked about $65 million of its current $165 million bank balance for district exploration in an area mined for gold and antimony for 50 years in the 1800s and early 1900s.
“We've got nine rigs drilling today, and we're going to 22 rigs over the next year,” Hudson says.
“High-grade, multi-million-ounce assets are very rare in tier one jurisdictions and they attract premiums and global interest and that’s exactly what’s happened with Sunday Creek over the last three years as we built this essentially by the drill bit.
“We have more 100 gram-metre hits per metre drilled than anything else I can see globally.
“We've got a very high-grade gold and antimony story. It’s large; it’s strategic with the antimony, which is about 20% of the recoverable value. The antimony does make it a very compelling business case.
“Victoria’s had a real renaissance with a new style of geology and a new government that is actually supporting mining once again.”
The reference to new geology aims to separate Victoria’s older, structurally complex mesozonal (Ordovician-era) orogenic deposits that have accounted for most of its historically produced gold from younger, generally shallower epizonal rocks that have yielded Fosterville (9Moz), Costerfield (2Moz) and now Sunday Creek. Hudson said when looking at the world’s giant orogenic gold deposits it was hard to go past Kalgoorlie’s fabulous Golden Mile. “But Australia's other key orogenic area is Victoria,” he said, highlighting Fosterville’s Swan zone and Sunday Creek among Australia’s 12 major mineral discoveries of the past decade.
“Today Victoria is producing more gold than it has for 100 years [with] five gold mines operating today for 500,000oz a year.
“There’s certainly great willingness in the state to build its industry. Critical metals have changed the way people view mining.
“We only have an exploration target that I can compare with but [of] the top antimony deposits globally … we feel we are somewhere between third and fifth at the moment. And it’s getting bigger. We are in the US system with the DIBC [US Defense Industrial Base Consortium]. We’ve been pre-vetted for DoD [Department of Defense] funding. So we’re talking at all these levels [with] government.”
The Victorian Government last year released its first Critical Minerals Roadmap, outlining plans for “critical minerals priority development zones (including antimony) and streamlined approval processes” with targeted 18-month review periods.
While Victoria’s mineral exploration and mining regulatory process are “extremely thorough and robust”, says Minerals Council of Australia state executive director James Sorahan, the recent development approvals were signs of a more favourable environment for the industry.
“Victoria has surpassed minerals exploration records in recent years,” he said.
“More than $632 million has been spent on exploration in Victoria since 2020 [to the end of 2024].”
While Fosterville is well down on its peak annual gold output of more than 640,000oz on the back of plus-30gpt dirt from the Swan zone found in 2016, with circa-150,000oz targeted this year, Agnico Eagle chief strategy and technology officer Jean Robitaille said in Kalgoorlie it remained a key global exploration target. The Canadian gold major is said to be spending US$300 million this year on drilling at properties in the four countries in which it currently operates: Canada, Australia, Finland and Mexico.
“We focus on a region with high geological potential and political stability, allowing us to develop mines for decades to come,” Robitaille said.
“In any region we’re looking not just to have one mine but eventually develop a regional platform.
“Fosterville … is a good operation. [With] the long-term approval we see at least another decade of operation. We’re working to improve the asset and probably increase slightly the throughput to maintain a decent operation.
“We are aggressive on exploration. We would like to discover the full potential of Fosterville.”
Alkane Resources boss Nic Earner said the company was “very excited” about gold and antimony exposure at Costerfield in Victoria after its $560 million merger with TSX-listed Mandalay Resources, which also added gold production in Sweden to its mainstay Tomingley gold operation in New South Wales. The portfolio would generate more than 160,000oz gold-equivalent production this year while the merger has left the combined entity with a circa-$200 million treasury.
“I think we’re going to see a renaissance in Victorian gold as we bring Costerfield to the Australian market,” Earner said in Kalgoorlie.
“[There] is a really good chance for adding many years of life and potentially mill expansion.
“Across the group we’re going to spend $40-50 million on drilling [this year].
“I won’t go into antimony because others have but what I will say is we are producing antimony [at Costerfield]. We’ve been producing antimony since 2005. The Costerfield operation in Victoria is one of the few significant antimony producers outside China and Russia.”
With forecast 2025 output of 1150 tonnes of antimony, “we’re the largest Western producer in the world”.
“We’ve talked about the pipeline and certainly I think [others] will be successful.
“But right now we are making hay when the sun is shining.”
Earner said Australia’s WA-centred mining myopia also tended to block out NSW, where Alkane has had its Tomingley mine-life extension plan approved and where it has its large Boda-Kaiser copper-gold porphyry discovery. He believes the state, like Victoria, gets a cold shoulder from investors. Former federal environment and water minister Tanya Plibersek’s curious intervention to halt development of a proposed billion-dollar gold mine at McPhillamys in the state’s central west didn’t help.
“What we’re talking about is a federal problem being represented as a New South Wales problem,” Earner said.
“That’s not correct.
“We and certainly others here – Evolution at Cowal and now at Northparkes, for example – find this a very easy jurisdiction to negotiate our way through.
“I challenge people to rethink their views of NSW and Victoria because we’re producing [in both states].
“We’ve done over 30 farm transactions. We've had project extensions approved.
“These places are profitable, these places are stable and these places are not fly-in fly-out: they’re local. So I really encourage you to have a look at, not just us but a lot of assets up and down the east coast, because they do represent value.”
Earner said the Boda-Kaiser gold-copper deposit found in 2019 had 14.7Moz gold-equivalent in resources (65% indicated) but was missing from some project pipeline charts shown in Kalgoorlie.
“This is the second largest undeveloped deposit in Australia on a [gold] equivalent basis and the third largest on a gold-only basis,” he said.
“Yes, it’s low grade, but these porphyries are mined like this all over the world.
“The key thing for us now is getting it approved.”
