Geologist and council had meeting of minds

When the Far North District Council hosted an economic development summit in late 2005, consultant geologist Richard Barker came calling with a plan funded by the Foundation of Research, Science & Technology via GNS Science to make use of a database of geological information “that taxpayers have been paying governments to collect for about 150 years”.

And Northland had already been identified within the geological community as an area “with a lot of potential, but not a lot of activity”, the GNS Science-contracted geologist said.

So the summit was perfect timing.

“Northland has had a varied history in terms of minerals exploration – it’s a geologically complicated place – but since the 1980s, there has been very little activity,” Mr Barker said.

The Far North summit was also timely for another reason, coming as it did at the end of the initial round of work in Otago, and just prior to the Otago Regional Council-backed geophysical survey that is now nearing completion.

With GNS Science having rich veins of data to mine, Mr Barker’s role, sponsored by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FoRST), is to find ways of getting councils and agencies to make use of it.

And achieving that is often about prompting local government thinking processes.

“There are plenty of councils and agencies out there with an economic development focus, but often they’re just looking at the obvious ideas – tourism, the internet and the likes.

“Unless someone actually puts it to them, they don’t tend to think about minerals potential, and it is worth thinking about,” Mr Barker said.

There is, however, no ‘one size fits all’ formula.

“You need to tackle every region quite separately. Each region has different potentials, different agencies and different councils.

“You need to work with them to work out what they are trying to achieve for their area, and you absolutely need their support. You simply can’t do this kind of thing without strong backing, and there’s no point trying to do it without it,” he said.

Northland took up that challenge.

“They were already well advanced down the regional development track and they had reached the point where they were open to listening to new ideas.”

“It’s great to see people get excited about this, as we obviously are,” he said.

And Northland now stands on the brink of a billion dollar promise.