Australia is the world’s third-largest gold producer, mining roughly 284 tonnes per year, behind only China and Russia. Gold comes from every mainland state, but the vast majority is pulled from Western Australia, with significant contributions from New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. Here’s where it’s found and what makes each region distinctive.
Western Australia Dominates Production
Western Australia is, by a wide margin, the country’s gold heartland. In the 2023-24 fiscal year, the state produced 6.7 million ounces (about 209 tonnes) of gold, generating a record $29 billion in sales. That single state accounts for roughly three-quarters of all Australian gold output.
The epicenter is the Eastern Goldfields region around Kalgoorlie-Boulder, about 600 kilometers east of Perth. The Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) operation, home to the famous Super Pit open-cut mine and now a major underground operation, produced around 419,000 ounces in its most recent fiscal year. Owned by Northern Star Resources, it’s been running continuously since gold was first discovered there in the 1890s.
Beyond Kalgoorlie, Western Australia’s gold belt stretches across a vast area. Key mining centers include Boddington (south of Perth, one of the country’s largest open-pit gold mines), Telfer in the remote Pilbara region, and numerous operations scattered through the Goldfields-Esperance and Mid West regions. The geology is ancient: most of these deposits sit in rock formations billions of years old, part of the Yilgarn Craton, one of the oldest pieces of continental crust on Earth.
New South Wales and the Cadia Mine
New South Wales is home to Cadia, one of the world’s largest gold and copper deposits, located near Orange in the state’s Central West. Operated by Newmont, Cadia produced 464,000 ounces of gold in 2024 alongside 191 million pounds of copper, using massive underground panel caving methods. Commercial production from the Cadia East underground mine began in 2013, and the operation has grown into one of Australia’s most valuable single mine sites.
The state also has a long history of smaller-scale gold mining. The towns of Hill End, Sofala, and the broader Lachlan Fold Belt have produced gold since the 1850s, and some exploration and smaller operations continue today.
Victoria’s High-Grade Goldfields
Victoria punches above its weight in gold mining thanks to exceptionally high-grade deposits. The state has thirteen historic goldfields that have each produced more than one million ounces, with Bendigo topping the list at 22 million ounces and Ballarat at 12 million ounces over their lifetimes.
The standout modern operation is the Fosterville Gold Mine, north of Melbourne near the town of Bendigo. Fosterville is the highest-producing gold mine in Victoria and ranks among the world’s highest-grade underground gold mines, processing roughly 960,000 tonnes of ore per year. What makes Fosterville unusual is the concentration of gold in the rock: high-grade mines require less material to be dug up and processed for each ounce recovered, which makes them more profitable per tonne.
Victoria’s geological survey estimates that 75 million ounces of undiscovered gold may still sit within the Stawell, Bendigo, and Melbourne geological zones. The state’s goldfields tend to produce clustered, compact deposits that can be developed relatively quickly compared to the sprawling open-pit operations common in Western Australia. Active exploration continues across the Bendigo Zone, with projects at Tandarra, Costerfield, and several other sites in the state’s north-central region.
Queensland’s Gold History and Active Mines
Queensland’s gold story is older than most people realize. The Palmer Goldfield in Far North Queensland drew up to 30,000 people at its peak in 1875, making it the richest alluvial goldfield in the state. Over 1.3 million ounces were extracted from the Palmer by 1897, and it remains the fourth-highest-producing goldfield across both the 19th and 20th centuries in Queensland.
Today, Queensland’s gold production is smaller than Western Australia’s or New South Wales’s, but the state still hosts active operations. The Mount Isa region in the northwest produces gold alongside copper and other metals, and the Charters Towers and Ravenswood areas in North Queensland have seen renewed mining activity in recent years. Much of Queensland’s current gold output comes as a byproduct of copper mining rather than from dedicated gold operations.
South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory
The remaining states and territories contribute smaller but meaningful amounts. South Australia’s Prominent Hill and Challenger mines have been notable producers, with gold often extracted alongside copper. Tasmania has a long history of gold mining concentrated on its west coast, though production volumes are modest by national standards. The Northern Territory hosts the Tanami region, a remote area south of Darwin where underground mining operations have been active for decades.
Where Exploration Spending Is Headed
Australian companies spent $282.5 million on gold exploration in the March 2024 quarter alone, making gold the single largest target for mineral exploration dollars in the country. That level of spending reflects both high gold prices and the geological reality that Australia’s known deposits are maturing. Much of that exploration budget flows into Western Australia, but Victoria’s relatively underexplored geological zones are attracting growing attention given the estimate of tens of millions of ounces still underground.
The combination of established infrastructure, stable mining regulations, and genuinely large remaining reserves keeps Australia locked in as one of the world’s top gold producers. For context, Australia’s 284 tonnes of annual output makes it the largest Western gold producer globally, ahead of both Canada (202 tonnes) and the United States (158 tonnes).