The concept to form a directional surveying business began with Mike Ayris, now Managing Director, in the late 1980’s, when he was presented with a problem. As a draftsman at Goldsworthy Mines at Shay Gap mine site in Western Australia, Mike would manually draw each vertical drill hole with a straight edge and perpendicular to the surface, as all holes were considered straight back then. One particular drill hole was drilled to a depth far greater than any others previously drilled, exploring a previously untested deposit deep beneath the existing pit. The deep 250m hole was diamond drilled and surveyed using a Gyro, due to the ore body being magnetic iron ore. The surveying company was especially contracted from the Oil and Gas industry, out of Melbourne, Australia. Mike was then required to plot the results from the survey onto the cross section and plans for the mine area. After several lengthy calculations and recalculations the deep hole was plotted over two cross sections, 25m apart. The drill hole had deviated in excess of 25m over 250m.

This sparked an interesting question…. If this deep hole deviated so much, what about all the other presumed “straight” holes?

In 1989, after several years’ research, Downhole Surveys was formed, starting in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia with a single operator.

A Subaru Brumby was fitted with a small 12v winch and travelled the Goldfields region, servicing exploration sites as far north as Meekathara to south of Norseman, surveying mostly open RC drilled holes with a film based multishot camera. Developing the film was conducted in a portable dark room. Once developed, the film was magnified and each 2 minute / 10m interval reading was manually input into a computer where the bore trajectory was computed.

Since our humble beginnings, Downhole Surveys has gone on to become one of the largest directional surveying companies in Australia, and are a world leader in directional surveying technology and techniques. Our technical knowledge and experience, paired with extensive research and development, has led Downhole Surveys to introduce over 15 different surveying products to the Australian mining industry.

Downhole Surveys – Absolute Precision