Dogs of Gold: Inside the West African Mining Gamble: QAV AU #947

QAV AU 947

[00:00:00]

Cameron: QAV Aus­tralia, TK. 947 is the episode num­ber. It’s 1:05 PM, the 15th of Sep­tem­ber 2026. What’s going on, TK?

Tony Kynas­ton: Not much, Cam. I could­n’t find much to talk about today. Noth­ing’s real­ly changed from last week, has it? Inter­est rates are like­ly to rise, oil price is up.

Cameron: the Houthis have destroyed the East-West pipeline Sau­di Ara­bia and tak­en con­trol of the Red Sea. both WTI and Brent are up well over 100 bucks now. I think like 103 for WTI and 108 for Brent maybe this morn­ing when I looked.

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: yeah, it’s, uh, going well. Per­fect. Per­fect. Seam­less, seam­less oper­a­tion there,

Tony Kynas­ton: And,

Cameron: Trump

Tony Kynas­ton: and North­ern Ire­land should join with the Repub­lic again to form one island. Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynas­ton: that’s the biggest prob­lem on the Trump hori­zon at the moment.

Cameron: I, as an, as [00:01:00] some­body of Irish her­itage, I agree with that, uh, too, but that’s, they should, you

Tony Kynas­ton: Nev­er gonna hap­pen

Cameron: get their inde­pen­dence. Ope­nAI has can­celed their IPO plans for year while call­ing for a gen­er­al slow­down uh, the, uh, AI devel­op­ment because we’re all gonna die if they keep it up at their cur­rent pace.

But you’re a cyn­i­cal, but as I said, quot­ing,

Tony Kynas­ton: I’m not cyn­ic. I agree with them. They, we should slow it down or reg­u­late it or some­thing, but they’re not gonna do it.

Cameron: You

Tony Kynas­ton: just say­ing that. No

Cameron: As I, as I told you, I was lis­ten­ing to Yes Min­is­ter audio­book again the oth­er day, and it was one of the lines was, cyn­ic is what an ide­al­ist calls a real­ist.”

Tony Kynas­ton: Yep, I’m a real­ist.

Cameron: Yeah

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, it’s, tell it as you see it. But, um, it’s an arms race. It’s exact­ly like the nuclear arms race, in my opin­ion. You only, it only ever lev­els off or the. Like, I would­n’t say the threat goes away or dimin­ish­es, but mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion is the only strate­gic out­come that [00:02:00] pro­tects us, I guess, to a cer­tain extent

Cameron: Pro­tects us from what?

Tony Kynas­ton: an exis­ten­tial event

Cameron: Okay. But what’s the mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion? Mutu­al­ly

Tony Kynas­ton: you don’t, if you,

Cameron: humans and AIs or

Tony Kynas­ton: between AIs. I mean, it’s, AIs are fair­ly anal­o­gous to nuclear weapons in this con­text. They’re, they’re both. If one unleash­es one, if one coun­try unleash­es one, anoth­er coun­try’s gonna copy it quick­ly and unleash it back and what­ev­er the destruc­tion sce­nario is, bio­log­i­cal weapons, destruc­tion of infra­struc­ture, what­ev­er.

Um, no one’s gonna sur­vive

Cameron: Right, but I don’t think it’s coun­try ver­sus coun­try which is the threat. I think it’s AI ver­sus humans which is the threat

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, but that’s like say­ing nuclear war­heads ver­sus humans. It’s just the tool, isn’t it?

Cameron: Well, except in this case, the tool is intel­li­gent and, uh, you know, may decide that we’re unnec­es­sary

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah. I [00:03:00] think it’s more like­ly there’s a side we com­pete for resources with it. That’s gen­er­al­ly how things go. Yeah

Cameron: Yeah. It’s the, uh, the ulti­mate paper­clip sce­nario, I think it’s called, some­thing like that. I mean, there was a. It’s, it’s a sci-fi meme that’s been around for decades, but some­body gives an AI the plan to build a bet­ter paper­clip, and it decides that the way to build a bet­ter paper­clip is to com­plete­ly mine the Earth, uh, you know,

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: you know.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah

Cameron: what hap­pened with the Hug­ging Face hack, is

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: it some rel­a­tive­ly, uh, mun­dane task, and it decid­ed the best way to achieve that task was to break out and go and hack Hug­ging Face. So yeah, which is why every­one’s freaked out. Any­way, that’s not what peo­ple came here to talk about, you and I prog­nos­ti­cat­ing about the future of the world. Let me, Because we have

Tony Kynas­ton: ‘Cause we’re so good at that.

Cameron: A, A, I’ve been doing this for a long time, [00:04:00] and I’ve been right. Uh, yeah, I said pod­cast­ing was gonna be big. Was I right? I also

Tony Kynas­ton: It’s big in our lives.

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: You and me

Cameron: Um, the mod­el port­fo­lio up 16.4% per annum ver­sus the SPDR 200 up 7.7% per annum. So doing above dou­ble mar­ket on that.

The light port­fo­lio is up 19.6 per annum ver­sus the SPDR up 9.8. So not too shab­by, both of those. And the Amer­i­can port­fo­lios are doing good to. Well, actu­al­ly, let me back­track. The US mod­el port­fo­lio, which was doing dou­ble mar­ket, is now only doing, mm, 50%. Um, it’s, uh, 105.8% ver­sus the S&P up 71.5%. It’s come back [00:05:00] quite a bit from when it was doing dou­ble mar­ket, thanks to oil shenani­gans among oth­er things. QAV Amer­i­ca light port­fo­lio, which was under­per­form­ing for a while there, is now out­per­form­ing the S&P. It’s up 12.4%, this is only since Decem­ber last year, ver­sus 10.8 for the S&P 500. So they’re both, all of our port­fo­lios are above water except maybe the light 221 port­fo­lio. I think that’s still strug­gling.

Let me see. 7.5 ver­sus 8.43. It’s still slight­ly under­wa­ter. Nev­er real­ly got back above that line since the, uh, inva­sion of Ukraine. But, uh, it’s near­ly reached par­i­ty. The rest are doing, is up 13 ver­sus sev­en. 223 is 22 10, 23.1 is 24 ver­sus nine and a half. So yeah, the oth­er three are pulling it up.

But that first one, still try­ing to [00:06:00] see the light of day and, mm. And it’s also only, does­n’t have many stocks in it too. I think it’s only got like 10 or eight or

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, real­ly? Okay. Right

Cameron: Any­who, uh, US econ­o­my great. Um, inter­est rate ris­es are pre­dict­ed for this week. Oil prices gone up.

Diesel, it’s all Zelen­sky’s

Tony Kynas­ton: but they get $5,000 back, Cam, after the midterms.

Cameron: but we’re gonna give you all a $5,000. “And the econ­o­my can han­dle it, no wor­ries,” Don­ald Trump says. “No

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. and

Cameron: in the kit­ty for

Tony Kynas­ton: I think the check for the, uh, tar­iff div­i­dend got lost in the mail. That was $2,000 a head. And the DOGE div­i­dend, I think that one got lost in the mail, too. The mail ser­vice in Amer­i­ca’s not that great, is it?

Cameron: Well,

Tony Kynas­ton: get through

Cameron: Well, yeah, the tar­iffs got put the kibosh on by the Supreme Court, so

Tony Kynas­ton: Ah,

Cameron: now, you know

Tony Kynas­ton: right. So if you got a [00:07:00] tar­iff check, you have to send it back, do you?

Cameron: I don’t think any­one got tar­iff checks, com­pa­nies that

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah

Cameron: I don’t know. Oh, no, they paid tar­iffs. They’re try­ing to get it back. Uh, the mar­ket today is not good. The All Ords is cur­rent­ly at 8847. It’s dropped from 9414 on the 26th of August. So the last three weeks it’s come back quite a bit. It’s, uh, back now to where it was in June of last year. We’ve lost, um, over a year’s worth of progress there. Uh, that’s not, actu­al­ly, you go back even fur­ther. Um,

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, it’s been over nine thou­sand for a while now, but, um, mar­ket’s expect­ing inter­est rate ris­es and it does­n’t like it, and it does­n’t like, you know, where the hous­ing mar­ket is and the impact that’ll have on con­sumer con­fi­dence, et cetera, et cetera

Cameron: Well, we’ve basi­cal­ly gone back to where we were [00:08:00] Feb­ru­ary 2025, Feb­ru­ary last year. It’s gone down low as sev­en and a half, up as high as nine and a half, give or take. yeah, we’re back down. So it’s, um, not a good, not a good year for stocks in gen­er­al at the moment. We’ve sort of been mov­ing more or less side­ways if you look at it over the last year.

Tony Kynas­ton: Mhm

Cameron: Hmm

Tony Kynas­ton: Liv­ing off div­i­dends

Cameron: Great, great, um, Bon Jovi song from 1986. Liv­ing on a div­i­dend. Yeah. Take my yield and I’ll make it I swear, oh, oh. Um, I got noth­ing else, Tony. I got no, no news real­ly this week. It’s just the world’s going to hell.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, I don’t know about that

Cameron: life. Did you see that in my

Tony Kynas­ton: I did, yeah. You.

Cameron: was my big news for the week

Tony Kynas­ton: Well, that’s big news

Cameron: [00:09:00] It was big news for me.

Tony Kynas­ton: Ooh.

Cameron: I tell you, man, there was a moment there when I was per­form­ing the Heim­lich on her and real­iz­ing I had no idea what I wa-

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah

Cameron: think­ing, “She’s gonna die ’cause I did­n’t know how to do this prop­er­ly, and I’m, and I’m gonna have to live with that for the rest of my life.” But for­tu­nate­ly, I’ve must have done it well enough. She pulled through. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was scary

Tony Kynas­ton: Is it like that Sam Rock­well movie, Choke? The Pa, Palah­niuk, what’s his name? Chuck Palah­niuk, who wrote, uh, Fight Club.

Cameron: Oh, yeah. I that.

Tony Kynas­ton: No, it’s good.

Cameron: was.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. The lead char­ac­ter makes a liv­ing out of, um, going into restau­rants and chok­ing on the food until some­one does a Heim­lich, yeah, to do a scam, get a free meal.

Cameron: Right. Oh, I have to check that out. You know I love me a bit of Sam Rock­well.

Tony Kynas­ton: he’s good

Cameron: Uh, yeah, you think she was scam­ming me? She was try­ing to get, uh, a free meal

Tony Kynas­ton: A [00:10:00] free cau­li­flower? Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah. No, those sorts of things, uh, put every­thing into per­spec­tive, I tell you, you know.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: big news for the week. Um, stocks wise, just tick­ing along. What about the, um, com­modi­ties apart from. Gold’s a Josephine. You’re gonna talk about a gold stock today, even

Tony Kynas­ton: I am. Yeah. Well, uh, I thought, uh, I thought twice about it, but we did­n’t have many big ADT stocks on the buy list to talk about that we haven’t spo­ken about. So I’ll talk about West African Resources, which was new this week. Um, even though the gold price is a Josephine, they’ve deliv­ered some good results, so their stock price is up.

So I thought it’s worth hav­ing a look at

Cameron: I want­ed to ask you about the gold price thing though because like as we know, as we’ve said, the world’s going to hell. Um, US econ­o­my’s going to hell. Um, every­thing’s, oil price is going to hell. But, and [00:11:00] usu­al­ly when things are like that, gold price is going

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: price is going down.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yep

Cameron: It peaked back in Feb­ru­ary.

It’s been com­ing down more or less ever since. Did spike a lit­tle bit July and August by the looks of it, but, uh, it’s back down now. how do you, how do you think that

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. Well, fun­ni­ly enough, I did a bit of research on that because I had the same ques­tion and it, it looks like, um, I guess if you trace it back to the start of the Ukraine war when a lot of the Russ­ian assets were frozen, a lot of the cen­tral banks, not nec­es­sar­i­ly the big coun­tries, but some of the, um, some of the, uh, small­er play­ers said, “Oh, okay, we don’t wan­na have our assets frozen, so let’s start hoard­ing gold.”

So cen­tral banks start­ed buy­ing gold. Um, gold price ran up and now they’re kind of sell­ing off to rebal­ance a lit­tle bit. Don’t wan­na be too exposed to the one asset. Uh, so yeah, that’s prob­a­bly the biggest [00:12:00] the­mat­ic. Um, also too, the US, it often, the US dol­lar, if the dol­lar’s high, the gold price goes down a lit­tle bit.

Uh, there’s a lit­tle bit of that going on because the US dol­lar’s recov­ered a lit­tle bit. If the US dol­lar sinks, it’s the same sort of argu­ment that the cen­tral banks don’t want their US denom­i­nat­ed trea­suries to reduce, so they hedge in gold. Um, but the dol­lar’s been stronger recent­ly, so that’s, uh, stopped them from buy­ing.

Um, and the oth­er thing is with inter­est rates ris­ing, gold does­n’t have a yield, so the fur­ther it gets away from inter­est rates, the more it drags mon­ey towards bonds rather than gold. Um, so when inter­est rates are low, peo­ple often say, “Well, I’ll buy gold. It’s, you know, the yield­’s not that impor­tant in my think­ing at the moment when I’m look­ing at where to park mon­ey safe­ly.”

Cameron: Right

Tony Kynas­ton: So all those kind of things are play­ing out. Um, a lot of the big banks are say­ing that, uh, the [00:13:00] reduc­tion in the gold price recent­ly is prob­a­bly run­ning its course and it might start to turn up, but they’re not see­ing it as being a con­tin­u­ing trend. They’re see­ing it as being just a, a bit of a cycle at the moment with a high­er US dol­lar and cen­tral banks rebal­anc­ing.

Cameron: Was­n’t every­one say­ing that Chi­na was dri­ving it up six months

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, well, they were,

Cameron: stock­ing up

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, that was part of the, um, the let’s get out of US dol­lar assets and the, you know, and ones that we can’t, uh, put our hands on if they get seized by a for­eign coun­try. So yeah, they were, they were stock­ing up on gold

Cameron: Hmm. Hmm. right. You got any­thing else to talk about or you just wan­na get into

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, let’s get into WAF. What a great sto­ry. Uh, I know I’ve talked about them before, and I think we’ve talked about them at results times in the past, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done a Pulled Pork on them. It was­n’t in our list, so it’s, it’s, you know, goes back a long time. Uh, so if I, if I frame the dis­cus­sion like this, I’m, I’m [00:14:00] gonna talk about an orga­ni­za­tion that deals with armed gun­men, runs a net­work of pri­vate roads through ene­my ter­ri­to­ry, has embed­ded itself in the local com­mu­ni­ty, invest­ed heav­i­ly to cement its place by build­ing schools and buy­ing hos­pi­tals, endear­ing itself to the locals, uh, and then does it all it can to defend an oper­a­tion deliv­er­ing a prod­uct that it can sell for at least 100% mar­gin.

What does that busi­ness sound like to you, Cameron?

Cameron: The Mob

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, that’s the first thing I thought of too. But this is West African Resources. It’s, it’s kind of their busi­ness mod­el.

Cameron: right

Tony Kynas­ton: So as I said, gold’s a Josephine, so we’re kind of doing this one now almost aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, um, so you under­stand what it is and, uh, can buy it again when, when gold turns up.

But, uh, the share price is going up. It’s ticked up recent­ly on the back of some good results. Uh, why are the results good when the, when gold is a Josephine? So the gold price is trend­ing down a lit­tle bit. Um, and [00:15:00] it’s real­ly around their, their excel­lent results. So this half marked the first full six months of oper­a­tions from both the estab­lished San­bra­do mine and a new growth project called Kia­ka.

Uh, both of those are now deliv­er­ing almost 500,000 ounces per year, um, which they’re pret­ty close to. They’ll prob­a­bly do in the next half, which has always been their long-term plan. And I, I should also say that they’re, these guys are based in Burk­i­na Faso, in, um, West Africa, as their name sug­gests, West African Resources.

Um, they’ve real­ly done a good job at, at ramp­ing up gold pro­duc­tion in the area, keep­ing their costs down, and they’ve done such a good result that they’ve also declared a spe­cial div­i­dend of 20 cents per share. And bear in mind, it’s unfranked because it, um, the income’s gen­er­at­ed out­side of Aus­tralia, so you don’t get frank­ing cred­its on it.

Um, but that [00:16:00] high-yield­ing cap­i­tal returns caught the atten­tion of some income investors, and they’ve been buy­ing up the stock as well as peo­ple who are impressed by the results. Um,

prob­a­bly if I can talk a lit­tle bit more about what they are. So even though they’re head­quar­tered in Perth in WA, they oper­ate in Burk­i­na Faso. They have, uh, three major projects. A cou­ple I’ve spo­ken about, the San­bra­do, which is their foun­da­tion project. It’s been going since 2020, uh, and it’s deliv­er­ing maybe forty per­cent of their gold pro­duc­tion at the moment.

Kia­ka is the new one. It’s, it’s with­in forty-five Ks of Sam­bra­do. It’s been, um, ramp­ing up since twen­ty twen­ty-one. It was ac-acquired from anoth­er com­pa­ny called B2Gold, and, um, it’s one of the largest gold mines in Burk­i­na Faso. It’s also, uh, like­ly to pro­duce more or e- about the same or more than the Sam­bra­do project.

And then they [00:17:00] have a new one called Toiga Gold, which is thir­teen kilo­me­ters away from Sam­bra­do, and that’s pret­ty close to, um, pro­duc­tion. So I expect th-this com­pa­ny again to have anoth­er leg up in terms of its gold pro­duc­tion. Uh, found­ed by a chap called Richard Hyde. He’s the own­er-founder, exec­u­tive chair­man still.

Uh, he’s an Aus­tralian geol­o­gist with over thir­ty years of min­ing expe­ri­ence. Uh, he spent more than twen­ty-five y- of those years oper­at­ing direct­ly in West Africa, found­ed WAF in two thou­sand and six, led the IPO in twen­ty ten. He, um, does­n’t have a big stake at the moment. He’s got one point five-ish per­cent of the com­pa­ny, but that’s still worth near­ly six­ty mil­lion dol­lars at the moment on cur­rent prices.

So he’s still got a mean­ing­ful stake, even though he does­n’t qual­i­fy as an own­er-founder from a check­list point of view. bit of a his­to­ry les­son, they, uh, list­ed in 2010. 2015, ’16, they [00:18:00] dis­cov­ered, um, the M1 South gold deposit at Zam­bra­no and then start­ed to, um, devel­op that as a, as a mine. 2020, they pulled their first gold from Zam­bra­no, and that was six months ahead of sched­ule and 20 mil­lion under bud­get, which is kind of, it’s been the his­to­ry of this com­pa­ny of, um, under-promis­ing and over-deliv­er­ing, which is, um, you know, uh, well-received by investors.

And then, um, in 2021, they, uh, uh, acquired, uh, anoth­er big deposit, the Kia­ka deposit, and in 2025 pulled their first gold in June. Uh, and so by mid-2026, the lat­est results, they’re putting out around 450 to 490,000 ounces per year. And their long-term plan’s always been to be a, a 500,000 ounce per year com­pa­ny, which is, which is pret­ty good.

Um, that puts them into the sort of high end of the mid-tiers, [00:19:00] uh, in gold pro­duc­tion ranks if they were, if they were oper­at­ing in Aus­tralia. They’re based in Aus­tralia and list­ed here, but oper­at­ing over­seas. And it’s that, it’s that, um- That sov­er­eign risk of oper­at­ing in Burk­i­na Faso, uh, which is the inter­est­ing part of the sto­ry and the rea­son why it comes up on our buy list because this, this com­pa­ny, if it was oper­at­ing in Aus­tralia, would prob­a­bly worth, be worth three or four or maybe five times the val­ue.

And you can cer­tain­ly pick com­pa­ra­bles in Aus­tralia, and they, they do trade on mul­ti­ples of the val­u­a­tion of this com­pa­ny. So how, how risky is Burk­i­na Faso? Uh, well, it’s, it’s had two mil­i­tary coups, um, in the last four or five years, so it’s, it’s very risky. Um, what is West, what is West African Resources doing about that?

Uh, well, along the way, they’ve done a cou­ple of things. Um, they have decid­ed to buy all their own equip­ment, [00:20:00] which includes a, a fleet of Cater­pil­lar trucks and, uh, drilling equip­ment, and to stock their work­force with local, uh, peo­ple from, uh, the area. And so over nine­ty per­cent of their, their work­force is, um, from Burk­i­na Faso.

And they, they call it heav­i­ly pro­tect­ing their social license to oper­ate by invest­ing mil­lions back into region­al infra­struc­ture, hos­pi­tals, local devel­op­ment funds, um, and train­ing in par­tic­u­lar so they can train up their employ­ees. They also invest heav­i­ly in OH&S to, uh, keep the local inhab­i­tants safe, and they boast a low­er, uh, lost time injury fre­quen­cy than the, the WA aver­age for gold min­ers.

So, um, the WA being West­ern Aus­tralia, not West Africa, for gold min­ers. So they’re doing a lot to, to keep in the good books of the local com­mu­ni­ty and the local gov­ern­ment. Um, the rea­son for own­ing their own [00:21:00] equip­ment is, is what they found in the past was that, uh, as soon as there was an out­break of, um, mil­i­tary action in Burk­i­na Faso, and that is some­thing which hap­pens, uh, unfor­tu­nate­ly with some fre­quen­cy, if, if you have exter­nal con­trac­tors, they gen­er­al­ly get on a plane and leave, and so the mine, um, has to shut down.

So they want­ed to, um, to insu­late them­selves from that risk by hir­ing locals and hav­ing their own equip­ment. Um

The oth­er, oth­er thing that they have done is as the gov­ern­ments have changed, they’ve gone on the front foot and nego­ti­at­ed direct­ly with the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment. Um, I guess they’re at pains to, to talk about not deal­ing with the, the peo­ple who are hold­ing the machine guns and doing the coup, but they’re, they’re not deal­ing with the low­er or mid­dle lev­els of bureau­cra­cy either.

But the upshot of all that is that the gov­ern­ment has what’s called a free car­ry inter­est in the oper­a­tions [00:22:00] of this com­pa­ny. So the, some of the, of the oper­a­tions or some of the local gold mines are actu­al­ly, um, o‑owned via a cor­po­rate struc­ture in West Africa, in Burk­i­na Faso, and the gov­ern­ment has what’s called free car­ried inter­est in those local oper­at­ing com­pa­nies.

And, um, uh, they orig­i­nal­ly gave the gov­ern­ment a ten per­cent inter­est in the mines, and now it’s been up to fif­teen per­cent with, uh, some of the lat­est, uh, deals that have been done to keep oper­at­ing when the gov­ern­ment has changed. Um, hav­ing said that though, even though they’re, they’re giv­ing a 15% free car­ry to the gov­ern­ment and they also have to pay out a div­i­dend, um, to the gov­ern­ment, uh, every year of, uh, based on what they earn.

They’re still high­ly prof­itable. So they’ve decid­ed to, um, to, uh, get in bed with the gov­ern­ment and give them an inter­est in, in the gold mines, give them a div­i­dend out of the gold mines, know­ing that they’re still gonna make a lot of mon­ey from the [00:23:00] gold mines. And gold’s impor­tant to the gov­ern­ment and the econ­o­my of Burk­i­na Faso.

It’s, I’ve seen reports of it being between 70 and 80% of the exports from this coun­try. So the gov­ern­ment, the gov­ern­ment isn’t about to shut down the mines. They, there is always the risk that they nation­al­ize them and take them over. But, um, West African Min­ing has tried to make, you know, them­selves ingra­ti­at­ed to the gov­ern­ment so it’s, uh, more of a sen­si­ble option to let them con­tin­ue to keep oper­at­ing the mines and to pay a, a div­i­dend, um, back to, back to the gov­ern­ment instead.

So they’ve done a lot of deals along the way. Um, the oth­er thing that they do to oper­ate in, in this area and oper­ate suc­cess­ful­ly is to, uh, run their own net­work of roads, um, around these projects. So as I said before, Kia­ka is fif- 45 kilo­me­ters away from Sam­bra­do. The new mine is about 15 kilo­me­ters [00:24:00] away.

Um, they’ve, West African Resources have built their own net­work of roads that run through the vil­lages which house the employ­ees who work in the mines and so the vil­lagers are more like­ly to have eyes on the road and let, let the com­pa­ny know if there’s a, you know, some­one’s try­ing to set up a road­block to rip off the, the trucks as they go through or what­ev­er.

Um, so these ded­i­cat­ed pri­vate cor­ri­dors allow West African Resources to keep their trucks haul­ing off pub­lic roads where pos­si­ble and to keep that, I guess, uh, high­way of trucks, um, heav­i­ly mon­i­tored, um, through their own, uh, net­work of, uh, of roads and through the peo­ple who are direct­ly employed and ben­e­fit from the employ- employ­ment in the busi­ness­es.

So it’s, um, inter­est­ing how they do that. Um- What else can I say about them? That’s pret­ty much. Oh, yeah. So I did come across an arti­cle, uh, in The Fin from twen­ty [00:25:00] twen­ty-three which talked about this issue, and they quot­ed, uh, this, the exec­u­tive chair­man, Hyde, who was say­ing that, uh, who said he’s real­is­tic about Burk­i­na’s sov­er­eign risk pro­file but notes the nation’s gold min­ing indus­try is too big to fail.

So that’s the oth­er thing too, is that, um, they’ve kind of built them­selves up, them and some oth­er com­pa­nies, one being a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny called Endeav­our Min­ing, as being an indus­try that’s, uh, too big to fail and if the gov­ern­ment tried to take it over or shut it down, then they, they’re gonna real­ly impact the econ­o­my.

So the arti­cle goes on and quotes Hyde as say­ing, “We don’t have a lot of con­ver­sa­tions with the jun­ta direct­ly, but we know that in our dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment, gold min­ing in Burk­i­na makes up eighty per­cent of the coun­try’s export rev­enue and is crit­i­cal to the coun­try. It’s a devel­op­ing coun­try, so they know they need to keep all the gold mines oper­at­ing because we pro­vide a lot of employ­ment and almost all the export rev­enue.

We go to Africa because the projects are bet­ter. We would rather work on good [00:26:00] projects in a chal­leng­ing juris­dic­tion rather than chal­leng­ing projects in a bet­ter juris­dic­tion. That is the real­i­ty. If you look at the West African gold pro­duc­ers, gen­er­al­ly we are mak­ing a lot more free cash flow per ounce than our Aus­tralian coun­ter­parts.

As we should. We are deal­ing with dif­fer­ent risks,” Mr. Hyde said. ” Investors need to be com­fort­able trad­ing project risk for juris-juris­dic­tion­al risk.” Uh, that’s, um, a quote from a chap called Darko Kuz­manovic, and he helps man­age Janus Hen­der­son Investors’ Glob­al Nat­ur­al Resources Fund and said the gold mines in Burk­i­na and Mali tend­ed not to be locat­ed in the most dan­ger­ous parts of those nations.

He says the best placed gold com­pa­nies today are West African ones. They’re, they’ve deliv­ered new mines and that means they are much more effi­cient and they haven’t seen the same cost infla­tion that a typ­i­cal West Aus­tralian gold min­er has faced. Um, so Perseus Min­ing also oper­ates in the area.

Canada’s B2Gold [00:27:00] also oper­ates in the area and they throw off lots of cash. Uh, the arti­cle con­tin­ues, “If the val­u­a­tion dis­count com­pared to less prof­itable peers such as Ramelius, Mr. Hyde may need to find alter­na­tive ways to reward share­hold­ers than by con­tin­u­ing to hope for cap­i­tal growth in the share price.

Hyde says, ‘Once we’ve got Kia­ka up and run­ning, it is time to pull back and start pay­ing div­i­dends, or do we look for a third project?’ ” he said rhetor­i­cal­ly. And of course, they paid a spe­cial div­i­dend this half. So I guess that answers that ques­tion. Um I want­ed to put sov­er­eign risk into, I, I guess a sort of com­par­a­tive frame­work, and I’m k- gonna com­pare the risk we’ve just spo­ken about from, uh, coup d’é­tats and the gov­ern­ment in Burk­i­na Faso with the risk that gold min­ers face in Aus­tralia.

And one that was called out last year was Reg­is Resources and its attempt to get the McPhillamys Gold Project, which is oper­at­ed, uh, which is, uh, locat­ed in the Bathurst Orange [00:28:00] region of New South Wales. And the McPhillamys saga is just a text­book e- um, exam­ple of the reg­u­la­to­ry meat grinder that com­pa­nies can go through in Aus­tralia to try and get it up and run­ning.

So this gold project, um, was approved by the New South Wales Gov­ern­ment in March 2023. But then sur­pris­ing­ly in August 2024, just as the com­pa­ny pre­pared to start con­struc­tion, the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter inter­vened and, um, a dec­la­ra­tion was made pro­tect­ing a sec­tion of the Belubu­la Riv­er, which is where, um, this gold mine was, was cho­sen to con­struct this crit­i­cal tail­ing stor­age dam.

And so the mine was, was halt­ed. So, uh, the, the com­pa­ny, Reg­is Resources, backed away from the project and said it was­n’t viable in its cur­rent form. Uh, so that’s, you know, there’s sov­er­eign risk, I guess, across the globe in all dif­fer­ent forms. Um, I guess we have to assess whether Burk­i­na Faso, [00:29:00] with its own risk, is dif­fer­ent to the kind of risk that com­pa­nies face here.

And there are also, of course, dif­fer­ent ways of deal­ing with the risk in Burk­i­na Faso and its West African, um, Resources, uh, way of deal­ing with it is dif­fer­ent to oth­er com­pa­nies that oper­ate in the same area. So Endeav­our Min­ing, which is a Cana­di­an-based com­pa­ny, uh, does­n’t do the same things that, uh, WAF does, and they do use, um big con­trac­tors to oper­ate their, their, um, gold mines in, in West, in Burk­i­na Faso.

Uh, in fact, they, Endeav­our Min­ing uses, um, Per­en­ti, which is an Aus­tralian min­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny, and Per­en­ti signed a five-year, $1.1 bil­lion con­tract with Endeav­our Min­ing to oper­ate the under­ground mines in Burk­i­na Faso for them. Um, but one thing that, uh, Endeav­our has, which West African does­n’t [00:30:00] have, is it’s diver­si­fied across the region.

Um, so they don’t oper­ate just in Burk­i­na Faso. They also oper­ate in Côte d’Ivoire and Sene­gal, and they assess juris­dic­tion­al risk, and if it gets too high in one area, they active­ly divest assets and move, um, quick­ly some­where else. And that’s one of the, one of the easy, one of the ways of facil­i­tat­ing that is to have con­trac­tors that you can ter­mi­nate if you need to move on quick­ly.

So there are dif­fer­ent, dif­fer­ent ways of cop­ing with this. Um,

I think this is, this is real­ly about a risk-reward, uh trade-off, I guess. And again, to, to give it some con­text, the results, uh, for West African Resources in deal­ing with all these prob­lems have real­ly paid off in spades this year. So if I com­pare KPIs for 2026 first half ver­sus 2025 first half. Gold pro­duc­tion [00:31:00] has jumped from nine­ty-five thou­sand ounces in 2025 to two hun­dred and thir­ty-three thou­sand ounces in 2026.

So, you know, that’s two and a half times. Uh, they’ve like­wise, uh, had a big jump in what they’ve sold. The real­ized gold prices helped that. So, um, the gold price, uh, went up even though it’s come back down again now. They were real­iz­ing, uh, in 2026 four thou­sand sev­en hun­dred US an ounce ver­sus three thou­sand and forty-nine US an ounce in 2025.

Um, the all-in sus­tain­ing cost, which is, you know, one of the key met­rics for gold com­pa­nies, has gone up by some thir­ty-two per­cent. Uh, and part of that is that jump in the, uh, free inter­est car­ry that the gov­ern­ment now gets from ten per­cent to fif­teen per­cent and the div­i­dends that get, that get pa- that get paid.

But with a gold price over four thou­sand US and, uh, [00:32:00] even with the all-in sus­tain­ing cost of eigh­teen hun­dred dol­lars, they’re still mak­ing more than a hun­dred per­cent mar­gin out of, um, out of, uh, sell­ing gold. So it’s still high­ly prof­itable. Uh, rev­enue was up, um, from four hun­dred and sev­en­ty-sev­en mil­lion to one point four six bil­lion, and net prof­it was, um, more than dou­bled from two hun­dred and four­teen mil­lion to four hun­dred and thir­ty-sev­en mil­lion.

Both of those are Aus­tralian dol­lars. Oper­at­ing cash went up near­ly four times from a hun­dred and fifty mil­lion to near­ly sev­en hun­dred mil­lion. And I guess impor­tant­ly as well in all of this is that they now have just under a bil­lion dol­lars worth of cash and bul­lion on the bal­ance sheet, and, uh, that’s up from two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-nine mil­lion dol­lars the year before.

So bring­ing that, uh, Kia­ka plant ful­ly online has caused a big increase in rev­enue and prof­it. Um, th- they have, um, unhedged sales, so they were [00:33:00] able to cap­i­tal­ize on the increase in gold price. Um, but yeah, they had to, they, um, AISC, their all-in sus­tain­ing cost went up, um, but they were able to pay a spe­cial div­i­dend and to bank a lot of, um, uh, cash and gold on their bal­ance sheet.

I’ll, I’ll get, come back to that in a lit­tle while, but I’ll go through the QAV num­bers first. So remem­ber­ing the, the gold is a Josephine, so I’m just gonna run through these num­bers. Um, not say­ing that we should look at buy­ing it just yet, but, uh, they’re pret­ty com­pelling num­bers. So, um, it’s a h- high ADT stock.

It does, uh, twelve point eight mil­lion on aver­age per day in trade. Price for the analy­sis is three eighty-five. IV1 is three thir­teen, but we have no IV2 because there’s no con­sen­sus tar­get. And that’s one of the inter­est­ing things about this com­pa­ny. So it’s a top two hun­dred com­pa­ny, and it’s prob­a­bly knock­ing on the door of being a top one hun­dred com­pa­ny, uh, you know, as the share price goes up.

But we don’t get a [00:34:00] con­sen­sus tar­get. And that’s even though there are, um, a num­ber of, uh, mid-tier bro­kers who cov­er this, there are no top-tier bro­kers who cov­er it, and that’s large­ly because of the, um, sov­er­eign risk, uh, that they see with the stock. So they’re not gonna cov­er it from that, uh, point of view, which gives us a bit of a leg up if we’re inter­est­ed in buy­ing it, uh, ’cause there’s no, uh, there’s no con­sen­sus val­ue in Stock Doc­tor or fore­cast earn­ings per share.

Stock Doc­tor finan­cial health is strong. The trend is steady. Um, we don’t have a yield for this stock, even though it’s paid a spe­cial div­i­dend. It’s, it’s not a recur­ring div­i­dend, so the yield is zero, so we can’t score it for that. Stock­o­pe­dia rank it very high­ly. I’m just gonna take a minute to run through their scor­ing.

So from a qual­i­ty per­spec­tive, Stock­o­pe­dia give this nine­ty-sev­en in their rank­ing. From a val­ue per­spec­tive, nine­ty and from momen­tum, nine­ty for a total rank­ing of nine­ty-nine, which is real­ly high. And [00:35:00] an F score of nine out of nine, which I rarely see. So per­fect F score for this one. Um, so very high­ly ranked by Stock­o­pe­dia.

ROE, if you’re inter­est­ed, is forty-one per­cent, again, incred­i­bly high, espe­cial­ly for a gold min­ing com­pa­ny, which is putting a lot of mon­ey into infra­struc­ture and pay­ing off the gov­ern­ment with a spe­cial div­i­dend, all those kinds of things. Still record­ing a PROPCAF of three point three times. PE is just under sev­en, um, and it nar­row­ly miss­es out on being the low­est in the last, uh, six halves, so we can’t score it for that.

It’s a new three-point trend­line upturn. The, the price was turn­ing down, I guess, in line with the gold price until it had this spe­cial div­i­dend and good results announce­ment. Now it’s turn­ing up. Uh, it, this is a com­pa­ny with an increas­ing­ly, um, with, with increas­ing con­tin­u­ous equi­ty, con­tin­u­ous­ly increas­ing equi­ty, so that’s a, a pos­i­tive, I think.

We can’t buy it for book plus thir­ty per­cent, which is two dol­lars twen­ty-sev­en. [00:36:00] Um, we don’t have a fore­cast growth, so we can’t score it for growth over PE. And the founder, Richard Hyde, um, and the board only own two per­cent, so we can’t score it for own­er founder, even though he still, um, has a legit­i­mate stake in the com­pa­ny.

So over­all qual­i­ty score is eight out of twelve or six­ty-sev­en per­cent, and the QAV score is point two one, which is rea­son­ably high. That leads me to the risks and, and try­ing to assess those. So I think the first risk is Richard Hyde’s done a great job of of run­ning the, the maze of deal­ing with the West African gov­ern­ment and deal­ing with the locals and keep­ing your social license up to date.

Um, so there’s a risk that he’ll leave. How­ev­er, I think they’ve rec­og­nized that, and there’s been a lot of work at, uh, bring­ing the COO, Lyn­don Hop­kins, into most of the dis­cus­sions and putting him in the mid­dle of, of every­thing that goes on at, uh, this com­pa­ny in Burk­i­na Faso. So it looks like it’s [00:37:00] being set up to hand over to him, uh, which is a, a nice struc­tured way of doing it.

Um, and with, with nine­ty per­cent local work­force and, and strong com­mu­ni­ty ties, it, this may well, um, sur­vive the founder leav­ing. Uh, I think anoth­er risk we have is that, um, the free inter­est car­ry increas­es. Um, so the gov­ern­ment, uh, asked for an extra five per­cent this time. Um, what’s gonna hap­pen next time there’s a coup?

So that is a risk. And I think two things that mit­i­gate that are that there is a lot of, um, mar­gin to absorb that kind of, um, increased pay­ment. Uh, and I think the social license is valid for this com­pa­ny, that, um, if it is, if it is, I guess, leaned on too heav­i­ly by the gov­ern­ment and they start hav­ing to cut back on work­force or any­thing else that they [00:38:00] do that might affect the local econ­o­my, there’ll be blow­back to the gov­ern­ment.

So I think there is a, a kind of dance to be done around that. I’ll, I’ll call it, um, a real­i­ty check on, um, on, uh, an increase in that div­i­dend, but it’s a risk. I think the biggest risk for this com­pa­ny is that Burk­i­na Faso becomes a pari­ah state. And I, I note that the cur­rent, um, leader of the coun­try, a, a guy called Tra­oré or Tra­oré, has already aligned him­self with Rus­sia and is ceas­ing ties with some West­ern coun­tries.

So to a cer­tain extent, um, they’re pro­gress­ing down a path which could lead to that. Um, but that, that has­n’t hap­pened and, uh, every­one still trades with them and buys their gold, so it has­n’t affect­ed West African Resources yet. But there are cas­es where com­pa­nies, min­ing com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in juris­dic­tions which have become pari­ah states have had to shut down and move.

Um, so for [00:39:00] exam­ple, Res­olute Min­ing, um, well, they did­n’t shut down and move actu­al­ly. They got through this. But they, that was the com­pa­ny you might recall where the CEO, um, was held, uh, in deten­tion while the gov­ern­ment nego­ti­at­ed

Cameron: He was, he was a guest of the gov­ern­ment

Tony Kynas­ton: to the gov­ern­ment, yeah, for like nego­ti­at­ed new, uh, roy­al­ty.

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: the com­pa­ny, the, uh, the, the com­pa­ny I think even­tu­al­ly, uh, come to a deal and the CEO was released.

Um, the stock did

Cameron: moved to Lon­don.

Tony Kynas­ton: Right. The stock did drop 30% after that, so that, that is a risk. Anoth­er one, um, which is prob­a­bly a bet­ter exam­ple was a com­pa­ny called Tiger’s Realm Coal, which were oper­at­ing in Rus­sia in 2024, and then when the, uh, Ukraine war start­ed, um, they were delist­ed from the ASX, uh, and share­hold­ers did suf­fer a near 100%, um, loss, uh, of their mar­ket val­ue.

So, um, there [00:40:00] are, there are some real pos­si­bil­i­ties that that could hap­pen here. The only mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor, I think, for West African Resources is it does hold this $876 mil­lion in cash and bul­lion, um, off­shore from, from, um, uh, Burk­i­na Faso. Now, some of that, if there, if there ever hap­pened to be a prob­lem with trad­ing in, um, in Burk­i­na Faso and the bor­ders were shut or, uh, you know, cor­po­ra­tions weren’t allowed to buy the gold that was mined there or what­ev­er, um, that would be a prob­lem.

Um, the mine would prob­a­bly shut because, A, they could­n’t get sales, but, uh, you know, they import a lot of their, um, oper­at­ing needs from oth­er coun­tries. So, so they’d need to buy explo­sives, um, which would­n’t, would­n’t be avail­able to them if the, if the state was a pari­ah. Um, so they would prob­a­bly have to rely on.

Well, the only asset left for share­hold­ers would be that, that gold, which is only about 76 cents a share, um, when [00:41:00] the share price is well north of that. And of course, um, I, I would think lenders to this com­pa­ny would, would get first dibs at that gold, and there’s cur­rent­ly about $388 mil­lion of debt. So if that gets tak­en out, um, share­hold­ers are left with about 47 cents a share in unen­cum­bered cash or gold back­ings for the com­pa­ny.

So, um, you are tak­ing your risk that some­thing hap­pens and, and it becomes a pari­ah state and you get, you know, your mar­ket, uh, price goes down to 47 cents a share. Um, and that risk prob­a­bly is not com­pa­ra­ble to, say, Reg­is Resources in Aus­tralia. Um, they did take a hit and write down their McPhillamys gold project, but they had plen­ty of oth­er ones to, um, to, uh, off­set that and their share price recov­ered.

So, you know, the ques­tion in my mind is, is West African Resources a rule one risk? In oth­er words, um, does­n’t mat­ter what, how good the busi­ness mod­el is, if you [00:42:00] risk los­ing all your cap­i­tal, is it, is it worth the, um, the, uh, invest­ment? On the oth­er hand, gee, it’s prof­itable, so, um, I guess with gold being a Josephine, we can think about the risk lat­er when gold becomes a buy again.

But that’s the, um, that’s the dilem­ma I guess we face. Is that a dilem­ma we face with all invest­ments? To a cer­tain extent it is. Um, any­thing could hap­pen to any of our invest­ments, um, like a Ukraine war, and even if we’re not direct­ly involved in that, we cer­tain­ly take a hit. So, um, it is a risk and reward, um, incred­i­bly prof­itable, and I guess it’s up to indi­vid­u­als to decide whether they wan­na take that risk or not.

And that’s WAF, Cam.

Cameron: Thank you, Tony. I looked up my notes on it. Uh, the last men­tion I had was from episode 835, which we record­ed, uh, or pub­lished on the 3rd of Sep­tem­ber last year, almost a year ago. [00:43:00] Andrew had writ­ten in and said that he had bought WAF at 99 cents, it was on the buy list in mid-2021. “I was a naughty boy and did­n’t sell it when it went south, but with gold boom­ing, it’s been hav­ing a tear.”

He said it was up over $3 at the moment. I think it’s, this is around that, a bit three,

Tony Kynas­ton: 360, 370. Yeah.

Cameron: 370? Yeah. Um, he said, “That was until their trad­ing halt on Fri­day as the Burk­i­na Faso gov­ern­ment want­ed 35% more of their lat­est mine.” So, uh, yeah. And I read a lit­tle bit, uh, over the years about, uh, what’s going on in Burk­i­na Faso.

Tra­oré, Ibrahim, uh, coup. Uh, kick­ing out France and the French colo­nial influ­ence in there and, uh, more align­ing them­selves with Rus­sia, as you said. Uh, yeah. Part of the long and proud lega­cy of France’s colo­nial involve­ment in Africa and [00:44:00] qua­si-inde­pen­dence in the ’60s, but real­ly not. And actu­al­ly, hear­ing you tell the sto­ry reminds me of Dogs of War, the Forsyth nov­el that I half read recent­ly and then got bored with it.

But, uh, sort of plots of big­ger, uh, British, uh, influ­ence in over­throw­ing or threat­en­ing to over­throw small African nations to get their hands on the min­ing rights for min­er­als, et cetera, et cetera.

Tony Kynas­ton: Well, this, this remind­ed me so much of Land­man, the series. Like, I could just see Bil­ly Bob Thorn­ton being this hard fel­low run­ning around doing deals with gov­ern­ments to keep him off his back, get­ting, you know, invest­ing in the local com­mu­ni­ties to get them to watch out for him and all this kind of stuff.

It’s a. Yeah, it’s, it’s a, it is like a Forsyth nov­el, I guess, but very much like Land­man as well. And of course, the oth­er risk is that, um, Tra­oré is, I think, came to pow­er not, not just to, um, you know, rein­force inde­pen­dence with, with France, but also I think there is an Islam­ic ter­ror­ist, um, [00:45:00] under­cur­rent in the area that he was fight­ing as well, and if that flips, then there is a risk that Burk­i­na Faso does become a pari­ah state, I would think.

Cameron: Yeah. Very good. That’s WAF. I don’t hold it in any of my port­fo­lios. Do you hold it?

Tony Kynas­ton: I don’t. Now, I have owned it in the past, so I was­n’t, uh, you know, I, I was going in eyes open know­ing that it’s, um, you know, incred­i­bly under­val­ued, incred­i­bly cash pro­duc­tive, but you are tak­ing a risk that some­thing hap­pens which, um, you know, sees you unwind all your invest­ments quick­ly.

Cameron: Which did hap­pen for me with Res­olute when it dropped 30%.

Tony Kynas­ton: right.

Cameron: get rid of.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: Thank you, TK. Well, that’s that. After Hours.

Tony Kynas­ton: Have you watched The Gen­tle­men at all on Net­flix?

Cameron: the new. I watched the first

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah,

Cameron: have both watched the sec­ond sea­son, and they said, uh, it’s even bet­ter than the first sea­son, they think. So

Tony Kynas­ton: I thought so too. And I, [00:46:00] I’ll, I won’t do a spoil­er, but I was watch­ing it going, “This reminds me of some­thing.” And, uh, I said, like after about the third last episode, I said, “This is the freak­ing God­fa­ther.” It’s. And then I looked it up and, yeah, Guy Ritchie’s want­ed to make it a homage to The God­fa­ther Part II.

Cameron: Right.

Tony Kynas­ton: the, the plot sort of par­al­lels that a lot.

Cameron: Right. Good.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: Uh, what Chris­sy and I’ve been watch­ing is actu­al­ly a Japan­ese film from 1953 called Tokyo Sto­ry by a direc­tor called Ozu. You ever heard of

Tony Kynas­ton: No,

Cameron: 100% rat­ing on Rot­ten Toma­toes. In a 2012 Sight & Sound poll, it was vot­ed the third great­est film of all time by crit­ics world­wide, and in the same poll it was vot­ed the great­est film of all time by 358 direc­tors and film­mak­ers world­wide.

Tony Kynas­ton: Wow.

Cameron: Yeah. 1953, black and white. It’s [00:47:00] about an elder­ly cou­ple liv­ing in a region­al part of Japan who go to Tokyo to vis­it their kids. And, um, it’s beau­ti­ful­ly shot, very slow, uh, beau­ti­ful­ly framed and every­thing, but it’s pret­ty much about how their kids are busy, their kids are liv­ing in, uh, the Amer­i­can­ized, uh, you know, world of Japan post-World War II.

They’re all about mon­ey and busi­ness and, you know, they don’t real­ly don’t have time. They’re try­ing to get rid of their par­ents to send them off to this or send them off to that so they don’t have to spend time with them, and par­ents just, um, real­iz­ing that, you know, well, it’s done. You know. We’re not impor­tant any­more. It’s, um, a clas­sic exam­ple, uh, of mono no aware, I think, in Japan­ese cin­e­ma, the, um, sad­ness of imper­ma­nence, [00:48:00] time has moved on and no longer, um, rel­e­vant real­ly in their kids’ lives. Um, any­way, touch­ing, slow, but beau­ti­ful if you like that kind of thing.

Tony Kynas­ton: Some­thing we’ll all face, I guess, hope­ful­ly down the track as long as pos­si­ble, that we become irrel­e­vant into our kids’ lives.

Cameron: I wish I was more irrel­e­vant. They’d stop call­ing me every day, want­i­ng to talk to me for hours. Like, “I got things to do. I don’t have time for this. You told me all this yes­ter­day. Call me back when you have some­thing to tell me.”

Tony Kynas­ton: Tell him to watch Tokyo Sto­ry. Take a hint.

Cameron: Yeah, yeah. I’m irrel­e­vant. Leave.

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah. It’s Alex’s birth­day tomor­row. I’m going up to Mel­bourne to have din­ner with her. Yeah, yeah. Mm. 27.

Cameron: 27. Yeah, she’s old­er than my boys, not

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm.

Cameron: She looks younger. Um, Chris­sy’s near-death expe­ri­ence. Uh, Nip­pon Gui­tars, my music rec­om­men­da­tion for you this week, by Takeshi Ter­auchi. More Japan­ese influ­ence. Um, a mate of mine put me onto [00:49:00] it. It’s kind of surf gui­tar music like, um, Dick Dale, but with a Japan­ese tinge to it. It’s lit­er­al­ly, you know, you can imag­ine it in a Taran­ti­no film. It’s sort of like a com­bi­na­tion of Pulp Fic­tion and, um, Kill Bill. Taran­ti­no knows and loves this album, but, um, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to it a lot. It’s a lot of fun.

Tony Kynas­ton: Are they using plas­tic gui­tars? I know, uh, a mate of mine who was into gui­tars used to have a plas­tic Japan­ese gui­tar. It had that, yeah, it had that sort of twangy sound that you hear a lot in their tra­di­tion­al music.

Cameron: Oh,

Tony Kynas­ton: it was ampli­fied. Yeah.

Cameron: Well, no, I, I, I don’t know, but I, it sounds like it’s real gui­tars, but, um, yeah, a lot of tremo­lo pick­ing and vibra­to arms. That kind of,

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: But kind of upbeat, fun, surf [00:50:00] rocky, you know. It’s just a lot of fun. A lot of chill, chill­ing. Uh, and I’m still read­ing, um, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which Nabokov will come up in our Amer­i­can episode this

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, okay. I did­n’t, did­n’t see that part in my research.

Cameron: No,

Tony Kynas­ton: No.

Cameron: down. Did you come up with Sey­mour Cray in your research? Cray super­com­put­ers?

Tony Kynas­ton: No.

Cameron: Rab­bit holes, Tony, rab­bit holes. I went down rab­bit holes. Well, that’s, uh, QAV for this week. Um, the world’s going to hell, but we’re just surf­ing the waves with surf, with Japan­ese surf rock play­ing in the back­ground.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. All right. Well, good hunt­ing peo­ple.