Australian Miners Boost Gold Exploration to Benefit From Rally

Operations at an open pit gold mine in Australia.

Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg

Australian miners are ramping up gold exploration as prices that have surged to a record high this year spur a search for new deposits.

They spent a combined A$431.5 million ($238 million) on exploration in the three months through September, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It was the highest quarterly spend in figures going back to 1994.