When the receivers moved in on Charters Towers Gold Mines NL last week, Pierpont was not entirely surprised. But then your correspondent had been a sceptic about it for some time.

The brief background is that for a quarter of a century, Jim Lynch and his family controlled a bunch of leases covering the old goldfield under the town of Charters Towers in north Queensland. The control was through a company called Great Mines Ltd, which holds shares in a public unlisted company named Charters Towers Mines NL. In 1993 they floated Charters Towers Gold Mines NL as a public listed company, with Great Mines holding 52 per cent of the issued capital.