Tuesday 14 November 2023 – after AGM (AGM starts at 6pm for 6.15pm). Indonesia: Volcanoes, Riches and Diversity. A Product of Geology By John Carlile 

at the Indonesian Embassy, 30 Great Peter Street, London and simultaneously via Zoom

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago comprising over 17,000 islands, stretches 6,000km along the equator. It formed over the last 55 million years as the Australian Plate drifted northwards from the Antarctic to collide with the Eurasian and Pacific Plates in the tropics.
These plate movements have virtually closed an ocean and created a chain of volcanoes that make up many Indonesian islands. The result of these movements is that the two ancient continents of Sundaland (SE Asia) and Sahul (Australia and Papua) are now juxtaposed along the equator with their mineral resources, and a third group of mineral resources was created in the interaction zone as the two continents came together. Tin and bauxite occur in the west, nickel in the east, and gold and copper throughout the interaction zone in volcanic arcs.
Tropical weathering over millions of years has formed rich soils supporting a thriving agricultural and spice trade and has enriched the primary mineral deposits.
Over thousands of years, these riches have attracted many waves of settlers, traders and invaders who have brought their cultures and beliefs that have created the diversity of peoples that define Indonesia today.
This talk attempted to explain Indonesia’s enormous richness and diversity in terms of the dynamic geological processes that have shaped the archipelago.

Mr Carlile is an AIS member and a geologist with over 35 years’ experience in resources companies He led Newcrest’s presence in Indonesia and the grassroots discovery of the Gosowong high-grade Epithermal gold-silver deposit. 

John Carlile is an exploration geologist from Jersey in the Channel Islands. After graduating with a BSc (Hons) in Geology from Reading University and an MSc in Mineral Exploration from Imperial College London, John has spent the last 40 years or so exploring gold and copper in various parts of the world but mainly throughout the Asia-Pacific
Region with particular focus on Indonesia.
In the mid-1990s, he established and led the Newcrest team that discovered the Gosowong gold deposit on the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera. What is now known as The Gosowong Goldfield has grown to become one of the more significant high-grade epithermal
goldfields in the world that have produced over 7 million ounces of gold to date and is still going strong 25 years later.
Living and working in many remote parts of Indonesia has provided John exposure to a spectacular array of terrain and wildlife and to many remote and isolated communities.

A number of people who attended last month’s talk by John Carlile asked for a copy of his booklet on Indonesia’s diversity. John has kindly sent us a PDF of it, which can be downloaded here.