Experts Believe the Next Great Gold Find Could Be Under Australia's Great Plains

New mining technology has recently enabled companies to discover previously unknown deeply-buried gold deposits and some experts believe the next great gold field could be found underneath the great plains of Australia.

Neil Williams, the former Chief of the government research agency Geoscience Australia believes that the world's mineral deposits are evenly distributed throughout the planet and that we have only thus far discovered mines with veins at or near the surface.

The current world's-deepest mine, the 2-mile deep Mponeng mine in South Africa was discovered and mined using traditional mining methods. Most geologists believe that the majority of the big deposits have already been discovered. Most vein discoveries in Australia have been found at depths of less than 250 feet, with some smaller deposits found at depths of less than 500 feet. But Williams believes there may be massive discoveries to come from exploring depths of 1,000 feet or more.

In the past, deposits would be found via a method of tracing river deposits upstream until they stopped and then searching the surrounding mountains and hillsides for the source vein.

But these days miners are utilizing new technologies including drones with sensors that can detect subsurface deposits and fracking techniques that inject fluids deep underground to break apart the rock and bring the ore to the surface.

The belief that there may be an even bigger deposit beneath the Great Plains stems from the discovery of the Olympic Dam mine, which was revealed to be located beneath 1,000 feet of unrelated rock in the 1970s. It is believed to contain more than $1 billion worth of copper and uranium.

Neil Williams says “There will be Olympic Dams under the Great Plains.”