SMEDG-AIG Poet Laureate Ken Maiden’s Poetic Summation

We commenced with anticipation

A hum of excited conversation

Then Kaylene Camuti

In her introductory duty

Spoke of career expectation

Dick and Dave then both set the scene

And they gave a fantastic routine

With a framework tectonic

And isotopes radiogonic

(Well I had to get it to rhyme, didn’t I)

And everything else in between

We continued with systems magmatic

And illustrations diagrammatic

Deposits hosted by breccia

Full of gold, yes, you betcha,

And all of it very dramatic

Grace Cumming whose detailed observations

Have such silver-gold implications

And then Rosie Sloan

Came into her own

With deep IP penetration

There was a session on granites and more

And we heard of deposits galore

For a start Phil Blevin

Was in seventh heaven

At the thought of all that tin ore

To the podium strode Andrew White

And I thought he was looking quite bright

Down there at Mount Adrah

They just say “Abracadabra”

And Bingo – what a delight

As a stand-in, along came Ross Cayley

“Rollback” – he said it so gaily

In Mungana the conditions

Attract bent politicians -

But in Sydney we get that stuff daily

Eoin and Tim with rock alteration

To assist with interpretation

You can look under cover

Where it’s hard to discover

But plenty of great expectation

Maggie Hayes is a bit of a sleuth

She’s uncovered all those gems of truth

When geologists ancient and wise

With excitement still in their eyes

Re-lived all the fun of their youth

Peter Downs kicked off on Day Two

With the support of a wonderful crew

With fantastic oration

About Cobar exploration

And quite a lot of it new

We had persistence and dedication

We had much structural complication

We had 22 percent copper

Now that is a whopper

And what a fantastic location

They spoke of silicification

Of volcanics and fault activation

Though basin inversion

Sounds like a perversion

In discovery, it’s pure revelation

And finally to orogenic gold

And here there was much to behold

To lead the charge

It was up to Ross Large

So we’d see the story unfold

There was Simon and there was Bruce Kay

There was Cael and Anthony Gray

There’s so much euphoria

Down there in Victoria

You can hear them shout “hip-hip-hooray”

And north of the border we find

They’re certainly not left behind

In the Girilambone Basin

And at Tomingley, they’re racin’

There’s so much more to be mined

If your name didn’t get a mention

It’s not for a lack of attention

I could go on for so long

I could break into song

It’s been such a fantastic convention

If you want new target generation

Or you’ve got academic constipation

There’s a deposit style

That will give you a smile

And provide that much-needed inspiration

If your career has hit the rails

Or your business model fails

Revive your expectations

From these great presentations

In Orange, New South Wales

If your company’s fortune declines

If your chief geologist resigns

If you want to know more

About how to find ore

Come to the next “Mines and Wines”