And so it was. A fluttering plastic ribbon on a stake marked the turn off of the new access. My Avis Ford Falcon was the first two wheel drive vehicle to negotiate that historic track. A few bumpy kilometres through the scrub there was confirmation of an alluvial mining operation with a collection of mobile huts with a trommel (a tilted rotating perforated cylinder used to concentrate gravel), not rotary pans.

Frank Hughes? No, the exploration camp was further up the track I was told politely (it turned out that they thought that I was a CRA director) – so, onward and upward. A few kilometres and my way was blocked by an approaching four wheel drive, driven by a bronzed, dusty young Victorian rouseabout, Danny Mitton, who asked my business.

I introduced myself, gave him my card and asked Frank Hughes’ whereabouts. He told me to follow him and led the way to a tented camp huddled under the river gums near a dry creek bed where he got on a radio telephone to Frank, somewhere out in the field. The reaction to the news that a newspaper reporter was right there in a very sensitive area was immediate and unequivocal. “Turn him round and get him out,” came crackling down the line.

The argument that I had travelled at great expense from Sydney and was a responsible senior mining journalist known by his boss, Rod Carnegie (then chairman and chief executive of CRA), carried no weight at all, and my visit was abruptly terminated after 15 minutes. No questions answered, no photographs permitted. An implacable Danny Mitton bird dogged me back down the track to the shire road and declined to share a warm can of Swan in the 40 degree heat.

Galling as it was to be unceremoniously ejected, my visit gave me quite a scoop for the newspaper. I made my peace with Frank Hughes and Danny nearly two years later when the Ashton joint venture partners finally let the press onto site and we shared that beer as old mates with no hard feelings.