By mid-1980, gold exploration south of the lake, at the original St Ives mining location Victory, achieved good results.

Consequently, a Carbon in pulp plant was constructed at Kambalda and commenced operations on 23 October 1981 to process ore from St Ives which was officially named the Kambalda Gold Operations.

[4] The annual throughput of the process plant at Kambalda was expanded to 750,000 tonnes by 1982, with the gold produced at the mine offsetting WMC's declining profits from nickel caused by a drop in price for the commodity.

The increasing size of the gold operation and the difficulty and cost of transporting the ore across the lake to Kambalda led WMC to the decision to construct a separate gold mining plant at St Ives, which was commissioned in May 1988 and eventually expanded to an annual throughput of three million tonnes.

[6][7] The combined price for the two Australian operations Goldfields purchased, St Ives and the Agnew Gold Mine, was US$180 million in cash and US$52 million in Gold Fields shares.