Gold Rush

by Jim Richards

  ‘Moses, get the fuel from the boat,’ I ordered.

  You have to be pretty careful with petrol. When you pour it out, the vapour flows invisibly downhill, ready to burn anything in its path. I had witnessed a whole cooking complex burn down like this when I was in the OTC. However, on this occasion it could work in our favour as our camp was on a small rise and the ants’ homeland was in a basin of lower ground.

  The men all smoked and I told them not to make any flame or spark. We approached the ants’ nesting area. They were emerging from various holes in the ground, so we poured petrol down the openings and retreated to the high ground, dropping a line of fuel as we went.

  I lit the end of the fuel, and whoooosh, the flame flew downhill towards the ant nest. The next effect was a lot more violent than I had imagined: a series of underground explosions took place, shaking the ground we were standing on. After a few goes over the next couple of days, the columns of ants finally melted away and we were left in peace.

  The following week we made our way back to the main Eping camp for a fuel run. As I walked up the slope to the camp, I heard a female voice screaming in absolute terror. I ran up the rise just in time to see Loretta sprinting past with a deadly labarria snake trailing behind her, the snake’s teeth firmly sunk into her black rubber boot.

  Loretta was trying to outrun the snake but she didn’t realise it was actually attached to her boot. She was hysterical with fear. As she turned and ran past me the second time I jumped on top of the snake and Mackie finished it off with his machete.

  Loretta collapsed into my arms, a sobbing heap, and I was just starting to comfort her when Seth turned up.

  Loretta’s problem had started in the toilet block. When she stood up she’d stepped onto the sleeping snake, which had quite reasonably tried to bite her. The labarria had probably hung around in the toilet to eat the insects that were attracted by the night light.

  Labarrias are a bad-tempered and aggressive snake with a fatal bite. They were justifiably feared in Guyana, and for poor Loretta it had been a close shave. We disconnected the night lights in the toilets after that and started using torches.

  In my absence a Brazilian mining engineer, Bob Lutz, had joined the growing crew at Mazaruni. Bob was a multilingual veteran who had witnessed some of the recent Brazilian gold rushes. He brought me up to date with what was happening on the other side of the border, and it sounded rough.

  Artisanal or freelance miners, whom the Brazilians called garimpeiros (same as the Guyanese pork-knockers, but generally more organised), had taken control of large areas of gold country in the northern Amazon and were operating in a lawless free-for-all gold rush on a massive scale. Working for a mining company had become a dangerous profession in parts of Brazil, where ranchers or garimpeiros would routinely threaten to kill mining company staff if they tried to exert their rights of access.

  Bob also brought me news from the incredible gold rush at Serra Pelada, the images from which had inspired my journey in the first place. I still wanted to go to Serra Pelada and try my luck. As we waited for dinner in the mess tent, I was enthralled as Bob, who had been there at the height of the rush in 1986, described the scene.

  ‘The first thing that hit you, Jim, was the stink. There was shit everywhere. The pit looked like it was full of swarming ants; 50,000 men working, digging and climbing up bamboo ladders 100 metres high with the golden dirt on their backs. They called the ladders adios Mama [goodbye Mama], because that was the last thing you said if you fell off.’

  Bob was a veteran of the rich alluvial tin mining operations in Brazil. He was now obese and in terrible physical shape, but he became energised as he continued to describe Serra Pelada: a true mining man.

  ‘Most of the material taken from the pit didn’t even have any gold, it had to be removed to allow access to the high-grade core. The claims were called barrancos and were only about six square metres. Claim owners paid the garimpeiros twenty cents for each sack of waste dirt they carried out of the pit; it was controlled using a chit system.

  ‘But when the best gold ore was being carried out, this system didn’t work because sacks would be swapped or go missing in the chaos of the pit. So the claim owners formed teams of garimpeiros who worked on a share basis, and this was self-policing.’

  The dinner tin rattled and we helped ourselves to some greasy fried cabbage and rice, with chlorinated river water to drink. Bob took two full plates to my one. We sat at the rough wooden table and I bombarded him with more questions about Serra Pelada.

  Another organisational system was for each man to work a week for the claim owner and then he got to choose a sack of dirt he could keep for himself. Often the sack contained almost nothing, yet the nature of the incredible grades meant that every now and again a single sack could bring out 100 ounces (worth $120,000 today) or more. There were a lot of big nuggets, too, in the hundreds of ounces.

  The miners were recovering just as much platinum as gold, and early on they didn’t know what to do with it, so the platinum was being thrown away – and it was worth the same as the gold!

  Once the size and richness of the place became apparent, the Brazilian army took over. They didn’t want any left-wing group getting control.

  ‘When we arrived, a son-of-a-bitch army officer called Colonel Curió ran the place,’ Bob said.

  Curió was, and is, a notorious figure in Brazil. He tortured and murdered his way through the Amazon during Brazil’s dirty war in the 1970s, and ran Serra Pelada like a private kingdom. Curió called the shots at Serra Pelada and milked it for all it was worth. Even the nearby settlement was named after him: Curionópolis, a town of stores and teenage whores with seventy murders a month. Colonel Curió was like a Brazilian version of Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz.

  ‘So how much money did the ordinary garimpeiros make?’ I asked.

  ‘The early ones, plenty: millions of dollars, some of them,’ said Bob. ‘But as Curionópolis sprang up, more and more of their money was spent on girls, gambling and grog. Prices went crazy and the people who made a fortune were the merchants. If you were good with money, you could get rich. I met one guy who became a dollar millionaire in a year, and all he did was sell roast chicken from a handcart. It was madness.’

  ‘So what’s happening there now?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘It has been over for a while. After heavy rains the pit walls started to collapse. The hole is now a lake. The only way to go back in is with large-scale machinery.’

  What was arguably the largest-ever hand-excavated hole (400 metres by 300 metres wide by 100 metres deep) was now flooded, putting the gold and platinum reef beyond the reach of the lightly tooled artisanal miners.

  The incredible Serra Pelada gold rush was over and with it my dream of joining perhaps the greatest gold rush in history. Since I had been in Guyana, I had followed any news from Serra Pelada with great interest via the various Brazilians I had come across, and although I had known of the various pit collapses, I had thought the garimpeiros would sort out the problem. Bob’s information was disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. Where gold rushes are concerned, it pays to be early. I would have to keep saving and scouting for my own opportunity.

  It is estimated that over 2 million ounces of gold were mined at Serra Pelada, worth $2.4 billion at today’s price, and this does not include the platinum, which would be of a similar value.

  More recently, the area was opened up by a Canadian mining company seeking to develop Serra Pelada as an underground mine. In 2013, this company published a drill intersection with a grade of 4,631 grams of gold per tonne over 2.3 metres width; this is the equivalent of 150 ounces per tonne, or nearly 0.5 per cent gold! As a bonus, in this same interval, there was also 1,600 grams per tonne platinum and 1,730 grams per tonne palladium.

  It is this mega-high grade that the Serra Pelada gold rush was all about. In the early days when the garimpeiros were mining the supergene (enriched) zone near the surface, large nuggets could m
ake the mined grades even higher. For the grade and the amount of gold in such a small area, Serra Pelada was probably the greatest gold rush in history.

  Geologists believe Serra Pelada formed when a hot brine carrying gold and platinum moved through a fractured syncline (the bottom axis of folded rocks). The fluid reacted with carbon-rich rocks that caused the precious metals to drop out of the brine. Finding another Serra Pelada is a holy grail for geologists, and many of us continue to look in areas where these same geological circumstances could be repeated.

  In 1990 there were no satellite phones or email. But I had been keeping in regular contact with Sarah by letter, and the mailbag coming in on the boat was always met with great anticipation. We had arranged to meet up in Ecuador, so after six arduous weeks in the field, I was thankful when this break came around.

  The holiday got off to a shaky start: the hotel in Quito had so many cockroaches that Sarah insisted we sleep with the light on. After that we had a wonderful holiday in the scenic highlands of Ecuador, and then on the Galapagos Islands. I had always wanted to visit these islands, partly inspired by the work of the great geologist and naturalist Charles Darwin. It was Darwin’s studies of the unique fauna of the Galapagos Islands that contributed to his thinking on the theory of evolution.

  On the Galapagos there were empty white sand beaches full of fur seals, albatrosses, boobies, pelicans, whales, dolphins, sea lions, and much more, all set against the backdrop of a clear turquoise sea.

  On the final evening we dined on fresh lobster and white wine in a basic seafront shanty.

  ‘You know, honey, when you left the Paras to go on this gold rush, I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard,’ Sarah said. ‘But hearing what you’re doing now, it actually makes some crazy kind of sense.’

  ‘Thanks, darling – I think!’ I replied.

  We had a further link-up planned in the not-too-distant future. Sarah was due to visit Guyana with a volunteer charity youth organisation. It was a bit of a messy way to go about a relationship, but we did what we could and, for the moment, it worked.

  When I returned to Georgetown, I went to a cocktail party sponsored by Golden Star. Many of the country’s political and mining elite were in attendance and I saw this as a good opportunity to network. As I worked my way around the room, I met a generously proportioned Amerindian lady with a penetrating gaze. She was escorted by two large black men.

  ‘Nice to meet you. I am Cyrilda De Jesus,’ she said in a soft voice.

  ‘Ah, yes, I know of you. You’re the diamond lady,’ I replied, which seemed to make her happy. We hit it off and spent much of the night together talking about diamonds.

  I had indeed heard of Cyrilda. She was a leading figure in mining circles in Guyana and was a most remarkable person. From humble bush origins she had risen to run her own successful dredging business and had become an influential mining industry advocate. She was now also a member of parliament. In addition, she owned some first-rate gold and diamond mining leases in a remote region called Ekereku, adjacent to the Venezuelan border.

  By the end of the night, Cyrilda and I had worked out a deal. I would operate a small dredge on her mining concessions, and in return she would get a 10 per cent royalty on any gold or diamonds I found. She also wanted me to help her in trying to attract foreign companies to invest in her ground, and I was happy to go along with that possibility.

  Seizing the hour, I resigned from Golden Star. This was accepted with good grace by the company, who could see where my real interest lay. At least here in Guyana, when you quit your job to say you were going gold and diamond mining, they did actually understand what you were trying to do.

  I worked out my month’s notice at the Mazaruni Project, which I was happy to do as I was going to need every extra dollar I could get as start-up capital.

  Another expat geologist at the Mazaruni camp was Jacques, a Frenchman, who was also excited about my dredging idea. He had a predilection for black prostitutes and was known as Black Jack. Jacques hoped to join me after I set up my operation, as he shared the dream. He had spent the last fifteen years in the malarial jungles of Sierra Leone and Guinea, running diamond-sampling programs for mining companies. It was rough work, but he had a plan. Jacques had assiduously saved almost every dollar he had earned and was now ready to take a few years off for some personal adventures.

  Alas for Jacques, it was not to be. He had put all of his money into the BCCI bank, which went bust in a now-notorious fraud just as he stopped working. He lost the lot. To add insult to injury, this included his final month’s salary, the payment of which had just gone through as the news of the bank’s demise broke. I caught up with him in Georgetown as he was trying to salvage something from the mess. He was a broken man, and I had to buy the drinks.

  ‘Why did you put all of your money into this one bank, Jacques?’ I asked him.

  ‘They were paying an extra half-a-per-cent interest,’ was his melancholy reply.

  I remembered that lesson: there were risks other than malaria and geology out there that needed to be managed.

  A fortnight prior to leaving the Mazaruni Project, I developed some painful itchy bumps on my feet and one on my left hand. I initially took these to be mosquito bites, but they kept getting larger and a black spot in the centre of each bump was also growing. I showed the lumps to Seth.

  ‘Jigger worm, Jim, or tungiasis to the quacks. You’d better get it out, mate, before she lays her eggs. That’ll give you ulcers.’

  I felt nauseous; I actually had something growing just under my skin, eating me.

  I got the small blade out of my Swiss army penknife, which I kept sharp, sterilised it in a flame and, with the help of tweezers, started digging into my hand. I extracted a white blob about the size of a pea, inside which was a black animal that looked like a small spider. The black spot I had seen was its legs, and they were moving.

  These creatures were so disgusting that as I cut them out it was hard to keep control of myself. But it was necessary not to leave any part behind, which could lead to an infection, potentially more dangerous than the parasite. Suppressing my nausea, I carefully repeated the process on my feet and then covered the wounds with Mercurochrome to kill any bacteria. (I found this antiseptic to be far more effective in the tropics than iodine, because it also dried out the wound; Mercurochrome is now banned in some countries due to its mercury content.)

  I wore closed-in shoes from then on, to prevent myself from picking up these jiggers that lived in the sand. There was always something trying to live off you in that damned jungle.

  I finally finished up with Golden Star and walked out of the Georgetown office, my own man once more. I had saved up enough of my salary to set up my own dredging operation, and I also felt I had gained enough technical knowledge to have a chance of success. It was not a bad recovery from having been on the bones of my arse a few months earlier. But the real challenges still lay ahead.

  CHAPTER 10

  TEPUI TREASURE

  It took Colin a week to dig out the diver’s bloated body. He had been buried by an underwater landslide while following a rich lead of diamonds at the bottom of the Ekereku River.

  The riverbed gravels had towered above him as he’d dredged ever deeper into his self-made canyon, chasing the richest paydirt. Eventually the sides had given way and a slurry of rock and sand had buried him alive.

  This accident happened a fortnight before I flew into Ekereku on my reconnaissance trip. Colin and his crew were still shaken up over it, but dredged on – they had to eat.

  I had the opportunity to work Cyrilda’s claims on the Ekereku River, and I felt the best way to start was to take a good look at the ground before I came back in with all of my mining gear. As the military saying goes: ‘Time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted.’

  The flight to the Upper Ekereku River (‘Topside’) took eighty minutes. We flew almost due west from Georgetown and I sat on the floor of the light aircraft,
jammed between drums of fuel. As we approached our destination, I eagerly gaped out the window at the flat-topped tepuis and their vertical, pale white cliffs. They were up to 1,000 metres high, rising from a sea of emerald-green rainforest. This was the spectacular, mountainous landscape I was taking on.

  The plane seemed tiny and inconsequential against this intimidating and majestic terrain.

  We circled over a large mesa and the pilot pointed at the fabled tepui of Ekereku, one of the remotest places on earth. It rose high above the surrounding rainforest, like an island suspended in time and space. Ekereku was a sheer-sided flat plateau roughly 30 kilometres long by 20 kilometres wide. On my map, it was just a big white area – unmapped. I could see a large black river running down the eastern side of the mesa: the Ekereku River, where I hoped to make my fortune.

  Surrounding the river was forest, which gave way to patches of savannah. A bush airstrip close to the river had been carved out of one of these more open, sandy grassland areas. We were only about 20 kilometres from the disputed border with Venezuela; this was the Wild West, even for Guyana.

  We bounced down for a rough landing and taxied back to stop on the river-side of the airstrip. You didn’t want to have to roll the fuel drums any further than necessary, and there were no roads or cars here.

  We were met by a large black guy with a shotgun. Colin was Cyrilda’s dredge manager, and he looked the part. The fuel, food and spare parts we had brought in were carried or rolled from the plane to the river landing. We then loaded the goods and ourselves onto an open boat and motored upstream to Colin’s camp. The Ekereku River was about 20 metres wide, deep, black and forbidding. Trees and vines lined the banks.

  After unloading the boat, Colin took me on a tour of the river. First we went upstream to the dredging operation. Cyrilda’s two dredges were working one behind the other, with the rear dredge moving the tailings away from the front dredge so they did not spill back into the underwater hole that was being excavated by the diver on the front dredge. This was to prevent a repeat of the earlier fatal disaster.