ABOUT one kilometre of the Newell Highway will be duplicated before Alkane Resources takes the "next big step" in the construction phase of the state government approved $116 million Tomingley Gold Project.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The company's managing director Ian Chalmers yesterday said "people won't even notice that they're on a new piece of highway" by the time major excavation gets under way to create room for an underpass at the project site, south of Tomingley.
The $5 million exercise will link the western and eastern sides of the site, currently separated by the Newell Highway.
Mr Chalmers calls the underpass "not just your average bridge".
"Imagine a bridge that's effectively big enough to take one of those big 120 to 150 tonne dump trucks," he said.
"They've got to go back and forwards through that underpass. The biggest thing is the depth... those trucks are about four or five metres high."
Work on the temporary piece of highway could begin as early as this month.
It will run along the western side of the existing highway, between the outskirts of the village of Tomingley and the truck parking bay south of it.
Mr Chalmers said the temporary road would be turned into a vegetation strip after the underpass was built, across two to three months.
Motorists are noting activity less than one kilometre south of the village as the project charges towards a February 2014 production target.
The bulk of the building work is taking place on the western side of the highway.
Two residue storage facilities are "fundamentally" completed, while the processing plant is fast approaching the half-way mark.
Waste products of the processing plant end up in the residue storage facilities, each "a bit bigger than your average farm dam".
"The main processing plant where the ore gets treated and the gold gets recovered is probably 30 to 40 per cent complete," Mr Chalmers said.
Completed is the 46-kilometre water pipeline from near Narromine to the project site.
"We bought an aquifer licence from a place 10 kilometres east of Narromine," Mr Chalmers said.
Production will begin at an open pit mine at the Caloma deposit, on the eastern side of the highway.
At the same time a second pit will be under construction at the Wyoming Three deposit on the western side.
Alkane Resources will tap into the bigger Wyoming One deposit a year or two later.
This week the company announced "significant gold mineralisation" in the Caloma Two deposit through the Australian Securities Exchange.
A resource estimate for Caloma Two is expected by October.
Alkane Resources also confirmed that it was funding the Tomingley Gold Project from its own financial resources.
"The $116 million includes a contingency, like a 10 per cent loading... in case costs go up," Mr Chalmers said.
Alkane Resources intends for the Tomingley operation to help launch its proposed Dubbo Zirconia Project, centred on a Toongi resource.
Its environmental impact statement was lodged with the state government in late June.