OUR PEOPLE
Rick Gordon
Rick Gordon BSc(Hons) PhD(Structural geology) MAIG GAICD
Principal geologist Rick Gordon founded Xirlatem to provide technical consulting support to local Goldfields companies and has expanded to work across Australia. Rick enjoys helping clients advance their base and precious metals projects through any stage of the mining cycle from conception to production.
Prior to founding Xirlatem, Rick Gordon held management positions with Northern Star Resources as the Geology Manager for Kanowna Belle underground gold mine and as the Exploration Manager for Kalgoorlie. During his time at Northern Star (and its predecessor Barrick Gold), Rick was a key part of the teams that discovered the Pegasus orebody in 2012, Paradigm North satellite orebodies in the Carbine-Carnage area, and the 2014 Millennium discovery which lead to the re-establishment of the Kundana Mining Centre.
Before Northern Star, Rick spent five years with IGO Long Nickel mine as a Mine Geologist and Senior Mine Geologist and was a key part of the team that added significant mine life with extensions to the McLeay and Long North orebodies and discovered the Moran orebody; formative discoveries in the IGO growth story that took it to a billion-dollar company.
Rick graduated from the University of Queensland with BSc(Hons) in 1999 with a passion for structural geology and undertook a PhD in that field. Rick began his industrial career with Gold Fields as a Graduate Geologist at St. Ives Gold Mine from late 2003 to 2005, then as an independent structural geology and mapping consultant in South America. Whilst always passionate about structural geology, Rick now prefers to focus on applied multi-disciplinary geoscience where a good dose of geological rigor can produce tangible business outcomes.
Nick Cox
Nick Cox BSc(Hons) MSci(Hons) MCSM MAusIMM FGS
Nick has worked in the Eastern Goldfields for over ten years and prior to joining Xirlatem he held the position of Superintendent Exploration & Resource Definition for Evolution Mining’s Mungari Operations.
During his time with Evolution, Nick was a key member of the team that discovered the Boomer deposit in a very mature mining camp as well as executing large Exploration campaigns and Resource drill outs throughout the Kalgoorlie region. Prior to Evolution, Nick worked for Northern Star Resources and was instrumental in the discovery of the Paradigm North orebody, as well working on multiple near mine orebody extensions on projects across Northern Star’s Kalgoorlie Operations. Nick has also previously worked for Alacer Gold and Silverlake Resources in both Exploration and Underground Production.
Graduating from Camborne School of Mines with an MSci and BSc in Engineering Geology & Geotechnics in 2009. Nick then spent two years working for a petrographic consultancy in London before emigrating to Western Australia in 2012.
Nicole Vendramini
Nicole Vendramini BSc(Hons) MAusIMM MSEG
Nicole Vendramini is a senior geologist whose passion is exploration. Nicole’s responsibilities include prospectivity evaluations, drill programme management, QAQC support and lab audits and statutory reports. Nicole’s passion is discovery and to assist clients progressing their projects.
Nicole began her career as an underground mine geologist at Argo gold mine. She has worked predominately in exploration and resource definition roles on projects across Kambalda, Kalgoorlie, Kundana and Kanowna over the past 14 years. The highlight of her career has been working on the Athena gold deposit at St. Ives from concept to discovery and of course naming the discovery inspired by a recent holiday to Tunisia. She distinctly remembers holding the first aircore chips from Athena in her hand, seeing visual gold mineralisation, and knowing this was going to be something.
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Xirlatem was formed in Kalgoorlie by principal Rick Gordon to provide mining and exploration consultant geologists for base and precious metal projects.