Cummins found Blackham Resources in 2019 while the Australian gold miner was talking expansion. The pitch was perfect: more production needed more power, so in went a new HSK78G gas generator, designed for maximum uptime at the remote Matilda-Wiluna operation while Cummins described its customer as one of Australia’s “growing gold producers”. Blackham later renamed itself Wiluna Mining Corporation and announced a new corporate identity centred on “integrity and delivering on our promises with consistent performance”. Then the seam opened. An 18-year-old apprentice suffered a permanent spinal injury and became paraplegic at the Matilda Gold Open Pit. Wiluna told investors it had raised A$57.3 million when A$7 million of that money had never arrived. A month later it entered administration. ASIC came knocking. By 2026, Wiluna itself had agreed facts and admissions with the regulator over the capital-raising announcement. Cummins supplied the power for expansion. The years that followed supplied a considerably darker definition of load.
The Gold Standard
Cummins called the 2019 story “With New Prime Power Supply From Cummins, Mining Operation Stays Always On”. Blackham Resources was introduced as a Perth-based gold miner expanding production annually and needing additional generation for the next stage of growth at its Wiluna operation.
Contract Power Group chose Cummins’ C2000N5CD HSK78 gas generator set to work alongside generators already installed at the remote site. The conditions supplied the industrial theatre: temperatures ranging from minus 2°C to 50°C, an isolated location and a mining operation where power interruption meant expensive machinery standing still instead of dragging gold out of Western Australian dirt.
Cummins had engineered the HSK78G for precisely this sort of punishment. Its case study boasted electrical efficiency of up to 44.2%, operation at 45°C without derating, 1,800 kWe even at 55°C and an 80,000-hour major-overhaul cycle designed to minimise costly downtime.
Maximum uptime was one of the customer’s key requirements. Cummins repeatedly returns to reliability, serviceability and keeping the operation running, while its accompanying publicity described Blackham as ramping up production with the help of Cummins power.
It was a nice clean growth story.
Mine more gold. Add more power. Keep the machinery turning.
Then Blackham decided it needed a new name.
New Name. New Chapter. Same Hole In The Ground.
In June 2020, Blackham Resources announced that it was becoming Wiluna Mining Corporation. This was not presented as somebody changing the stationery and ordering a new sign for reception. Management sold it as a corporate rebirth.
The announcement talked about a “new chapter in the Wiluna story”, a strategic transformation and a company hungry for future growth. Executive Chairman Milan Jerkovic said Wiluna had cleaned up and strengthened its balance sheet, paid off its debt and assembled a platform from which it could pursue ambitious expansion.
Then came the sentence that belongs framed above this entire fucking article.
The new identity, Jerkovic said, centred on “integrity and delivering on our promises with consistent performance.”
Mining companies understand grades. They understand assays, recovery rates, inferred resources, measured resources and the difference between gold somebody hopes is underground and gold somebody has actually proved is there.
That discipline would soon become relevant to money.
Before we get there, however, something happened at the mine itself.
Eighteen Years Old And Under 750 Kilograms Of Steel
In September 2021, an 18-year-old apprentice mechanical fitter was working at the Matilda Gold Open Pit.
He worked through a labour-hire arrangement but performed the job under the supervision of a heavy diesel mechanic employed by Wiluna Operations Pty Ltd, part of the Wiluna mining group. They were replacing wheel assemblies on an articulated dump truck in the mechanical workshop.
These were not car wheels.
Each assembly weighed more than 750 kilograms.
After removing the first assembly with a telehandler, the mechanic placed it on the ground and the apprentice retrieved washers that had fallen inside the rim. The mechanic later handled the second assembly differently, keeping it upright on the telehandler’s tines without securing it.
The mechanic then gestured for the apprentice to walk in front of the telehandler and retrieve washers from inside the rim.
As the 18-year-old reached in, the unsecured wheel assembly fell forward.
It struck him and pinned him to the ground.
WorkSafe’s later account is clinical because regulators tend not to swear in media releases. The apprentice suffered a permanent spinal injury and became paraplegic.
There is no need to decorate that.
A Procedure That Did Not Tell People Enough
Wiluna Operations had a standard operating procedure for changing tyre and rim assemblies. WorkSafe later said it instructed workers to ensure handled components did not create pinning or crushing risks, but the procedure lacked clear and specific instructions explaining how workers should actually avoid or minimise those risks.
That distinction eventually became the centre of the prosecution. Having a document called a procedure is not the same thing as having a procedure detailed enough to stop three-quarters of a tonne of metal falling onto an apprentice.
After the incident, Wiluna Operations changed the procedure. It identified additional hazards, inserted further safety requirements, added a competency assessment and developed another procedure covering wheel replacement on surface-mining equipment, including exclusion zones, transport protocols and injury risks.
Those additions are useful.
They would have been considerably more useful before an 18-year-old ended up beneath the fucking wheel.
In April 2026, Wiluna Operations pleaded guilty to offences under Western Australia’s Mines Safety and Inspection Act. The Carnarvon Magistrates Court fined the company A$575,000 and ordered it to pay costs.
WorkSafe Commissioner Sally North said the company’s failure to provide and maintain a safe working environment caused serious, life-changing harm to an apprentice under its care and supervision. She described the circumstances as avoidable.
That is not an allegation in a lawsuit waiting to be tested.
That is a guilty plea.
Meanwhile, The Expansion Story Needed Money
Return to corporate Wiluna.
Mining burns cash with an efficiency Cummins engineers could probably admire. Ore has to be found, drilled, blasted, moved, crushed, processed and sold. Expansion requires equipment, contractors, wages, fuel, maintenance and enough working capital to keep the entire industrial animal fed while management waits for the next ounce to become revenue.
By 2022, Wiluna needed more money.
The company launched a capital raising. On 17 June 2022, according to ASIC, Wiluna announced to the market that it had raised A$57.3 million.
There was a problem.
A$7 million had never been received.
That is where the mining vocabulary becomes helpful.
An exploration company would never describe an inferred ounce as a gold bar sitting in the vault. There are categories for uncertainty because geology is difficult and investors rather appreciate knowing the difference between what might exist and what has actually been measured.
Cash is easier.
Either the fucking money arrived or it did not.
A$57.3 Million On The Sign. A$7 Million Not In The Till.
The administrators’ own August 2022 report made the position painfully legible.
It recorded approximately A$50.36 million as raised and received and another A$7.06 million as funds committed but not received. By then the discussion was no longer about the joyous next phase of a growing gold producer.
It was about survival.
Wiluna had experienced production shortfalls and rising costs while underground operations ramped up. Creditors accumulated. Working capital came under pressure. Gold-concentrate production fell materially below forecast and the company could not bridge its funding deficit.
On 21 July 2022, just over a month after the market announcement about the capital raising, Wiluna entered voluntary administration.
The Cummins case study had been built around maximum uptime.
Corporate Wiluna had found another kind of shutdown.
ASIC Starts Digging
In April 2025, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission commenced Federal Court civil-penalty proceedings against Wiluna Mining Corporation, former Executive Chairman Milan Jerkovic and former Chief Commercial Officer James Malone.
ASIC alleged that Wiluna breached its continuous-disclosure obligations by failing to accurately announce the amount raised through the rights issue. The regulator also alleged breaches of directors’ duties against Jerkovic and alleged that Malone failed to take reasonable steps to prevent false or misleading statements reaching the ASX.
Those individual proceedings matter, but the distinction matters too: allegations against individuals remain allegations unless and until determined or admitted.
The company’s own position has subsequently moved further.
In February 2026, Wiluna announced that it had reached agreement with ASIC on a joint Statement of Agreed Facts and Admissions covering the proceedings against the company. Wiluna and ASIC agreed to jointly ask the Federal Court for declarations that Wiluna contravened the Corporations Act by failing to accurately announce the amount raised, specifically because A$7 million of the announced total had never been received.
They also agreed to seek an order requiring Wiluna to contribute A$34,000 towards ASIC’s legal costs.
The Federal Court still has to decide whether to make the declarations. Proceedings against the former executives remain separate.
But the company itself is no longer simply standing on the other side of an ASIC allegation yelling that everybody has misunderstood the spreadsheet.
It has signed agreed facts and admissions.
Integrity And Delivering On Our Promises
Now put the 2020 rebrand announcement beside the ASIC file.
Wiluna said its new identity represented integrity and delivering on promises with consistent performance. Two years later, the company announced a capital-raising figure that included A$7 million it had not actually received.
That does not mean management invented A$7 million in a dark room and stuffed imaginary banknotes into the balance sheet. The capital raising contained commitments, and the administrators themselves distinguished between funds received and funds still outstanding.
That distinction is precisely the fucking point.
A listed company communicating with investors is supposed to distinguish between commitment and receipt. Mining companies demand forensic precision when telling the market whether a resource is inferred, indicated, measured or economically recoverable. There is no persuasive reason for cash to become a more philosophical concept.
Gold underground has uncertainty.
Money in the bank has an account balance.
Then The Market Lights Went Out
Administration was followed by a longer corporate hangover.
Wiluna’s shares had already stopped trading in July 2022. The company eventually entered a deed of company arrangement, and the ASX removed it from the official list on 5 April 2024 after it failed to lodge its half-year report for the six months ending December 2022 within the required period.
This is where the original Cummins story looks almost quaint. In 2019, the brochure was about additional generation for expanding production and an HSK78G helping a growing gold miner maximise uptime. Three years later, administrators were talking about production shortfalls, cost increases, creditor pressure and insufficient working capital.
The generator could operate at 45°C without derating.
The corporate growth story had rather less tolerance for heat.
The Company Has Since Dug Its Way Back
There is an important current chapter, because this is not a story about a company that simply disappeared after administration.
Wiluna says its deed of company arrangement was fully effectuated at the end of 2025, returning control to a newly appointed board. In early 2026, the company reported that participating creditors had received 100 cents in the dollar, alongside materially improved revenue, profit and cash flow.
It has also been working towards a return to the ASX and continues operating the Wiluna processing infrastructure while pursuing a broader restart strategy. The present board is not the board that made the 2022 capital-raising announcement, and the company’s current financial position is plainly different from the one administrators inherited.
Good.
Corporate recovery is allowed.
So is memory.
Paying creditors, changing directors and rebuilding the mine do not reverse an 18-year-old becoming paraplegic. A healthier balance sheet does not make A$7 million retroactively arrive in June 2022. A relisting ambition does not delete a guilty plea or an agreed statement of facts with ASIC.
Rehabilitation is supposed to repair the ground.
It is not supposed to alter the drill core.
The Same Mine, Two Very Different Case Studies
Nothing here means Cummins caused Wiluna’s corporate collapse or the apprentice’s injury.
Cummins supplied generating equipment. Contract Power Group supplied power services. Blackham Resources, later Wiluna Mining Corporation, owned the mining business. Wiluna Operations carried responsibility for the workshop where the apprentice suffered his permanent injury.
Those lines should remain exactly where the evidence puts them.
The reason this belongs in The Generator Files is simpler.
Cummins selected a moment in the customer’s history when everything pointed upwards. Production was expanding. More generation was required. Maximum uptime mattered. The HSK78G could survive extreme temperatures, run efficiently, wait 80,000 hours for its major overhaul and help keep the gold operation moving.
That was the brochure.
The wider file contains the rebrand promising integrity, the apprentice trapped beneath an unsecured 750-kilogram wheel assembly, the guilty plea, the A$57.3 million capital-raising announcement, the A$7 million that never arrived, voluntary administration and ASIC proceedings that eventually produced agreed facts and admissions from Wiluna itself.
None of those facts make the generator case study false.
They make it fucking incomplete.
Gold, Missing Millions And A Broken Back
Gold mining is an industry obsessed with measurement. Tonnes moved. Grams per tonne. Recovery percentages. Operating hours. Cash costs. Reserves. Resources. Production guidance. Capital raised.
Everything goes into a table because investors want to know exactly what came out of the ground and exactly what went into the machine.
Cummins’ case study measured the generator beautifully.
Wiluna’s later history produced measurements of its own: more than 750 kilograms of unsecured wheel assembly, one permanently injured 18-year-old apprentice, A$575,000 in fines, A$7 million announced but never received and barely five weeks between the capital-raising announcement and administration.
That is the seam TCAP is interested in.
Cummins saw a growing gold producer and supplied the power for expansion.
The public record found something less polished underground: promises, missing millions and a young worker whose life changed in a workshop at the very operation everybody was so busy trying to keep running.
Gold, missing millions and a broken back.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Cummins – Blackham Resources HSK78G Generator Case Study
- Cummins – Blackham Resources Acquires Gold Standard Cummins Gas Generators
- Wiluna Mining – New Corporate Branding And Trading Name: A New Chapter In The Wiluna Story
- ASX – Wiluna Mining Group: First Meeting Of Creditors
- ASIC – ASIC Sues Wiluna Mining Corporation For Continuous Disclosure And Directors’ Duties Breaches
- Government Of Western Australia – Mining Company Fined A$575,000 Over Permanent Spinal Injury
- ASIC – ASIC Sues Wiluna Mining Corporation For Continuous Disclosure And Directors’ Duties Breaches
- Takeovers Panel – Wiluna Mining Corporation Limited [2026] ATP 1
- Wiluna Mining – FY26 Annual Report
- FTI Consulting – Multimillion-Dollar Turnaround Of Wiluna Gold Mining Operations