Tomingley discovery: design and mine life implications for Alkane engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Alkane Resources has identified a new gold-bearing geological structure at its Tomingley operation in central west New South Wales during the latest exploration drilling campaign, extending mineralisation beyond previously defined limits. The discovery sits within trucking distance of the existing Tomingley processing plant, which is currently fed by multiple open pits and underground workings, giving near-term optionality for resource conversion and mine life extension. Geotechnical and mine planning teams will focus on structural controls, continuity of the new zone and potential impacts on pit wall design and underground access layouts.
Technical Brief
- Oriented core logging will be critical to define fault/fracture sets controlling ground conditions and stope stability.
- Integration of new structural data into existing geotechnical domains may trigger updates to pit slope design factors.
- Underground access designs will need revised hazard mapping for rockburst, fall-of-ground and seismic potential around the structure.
- Any additional haulage from new stopes to the plant will require traffic separation and collision-avoidance controls on shared declines.
- For similar brownfields gold mines, such late-stage structural discoveries often necessitate re-baselining geotechnical risk registers and trigger action response plans.
Our Take
Gold items make up a substantial slice of our 1087 Mining stories, but NSW assets like Alkane Resources’ Tomingley gold operation appear far less frequently than WA or Queensland projects, signalling that incremental discoveries here can have outsized regional impact on the development pipeline.
Within the 2081 Projects- and Safety-tagged pieces in our coverage, most gold stories focus on either expansion or safety performance in isolation; Tomingley’s pairing of project growth with safety framing suggests Alkane is positioning the site as a long-life, compliance-strong operation attractive to conservative financiers.
For Australia-focused gold coverage in our database, Alkane Resources appears alongside a relatively small cohort of mid-tier operators, implying that continued discovery success at Tomingley could move it into the group of companies that anchor NSW’s gold output rather than being treated as a single-asset regional player.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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