We report a comparison of the interaction of gold with vacuum cleaved CMT (110) and chemically treated CMT (100) using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. In addition, we compare the reactive nature of both gold and indium on the chemically prepared (100) surface. The intimate gold-CMT (110) interface was found to be slightly reactive where tellurium was observed to out-diffuse into the metal overlayer; this is in agreement with the work of others. However, the interaction of gold with the etched surface produced an anomalous effect, not previously reported in the literature, where an initial dramatic enhancement of the substrate intensities (50-100%) was observed. This coincided with a rapid loss of mercury from the interfacial region. Similar behaviour was observed for indium on the same etched surface. A structural model is proposed for the post-etched surface that is consistent with the behaviour of the deconvolved core level intensities. Based on this model, mathematical expressions are derived for the variation of the core level intensity as a function of metal thickness; these expressions are used to provide excellent fits to the experimental data. These results are interpreted in terms of the stability of the initial surface and the effect this has on the final interface.