Original subtitles

This thing's going to be faster. He's very impatient, me old mate.

All right, we'll push it a bit faster.

Well, I better hurry up and get there. I've got deals that are going to be

done. And I beat him.

Here we go. We're almost there.

There you go, Rusty. I'm going well.

I'll cut to the chase, Frosty.

This is my last season.

How are you going to give up gold? I've heard that before.

There's no way you can give that up. This is absolutely the final roll of the

dice. I'm 70-odd years of age, so for Shaney boy, it's finishing.

But I need your help.

I've got all these tenements that I've accumulated over 45 years, and I want to

get rid of these tenements.

Gold's over $5,000 an ounce.

I've got to get up there, prove the tenements up, and get my money.

Shane, I've got my own gold to find. You know I've got leases as well. I'll be

doing it with you or without you, Russell. Even if I've got to crawl on my

stomach to get there, Russell. If you go by yourself now, you'll end up dead.

I'm going.

It's my final hurrah.

The first tournament's up at Nullargyne. I've got a buyer ready to go. All I've

got to do is prove it up.

I'll catch you up there, brother. I'll drive. It's only 18 hours for me.

There, Rusty!

Bloody shame.

A new season again.

I can't believe I'm doing it sometimes, but...

You've got to help out a mate, and that's what I'm going to do.

Shane's got to mould leases out here. He wants to sell... And we're heading out

to a lease about 20km out from Fantasy, which is the lease I own. So I know the

area, but I've never been to there.

Russell Nash has driven more than 1,300km to the arid landscape of Western

Australia's Pilbara region, this time to help lifelong mate Shane Caligari prove

up his desperado lease.

The thing about selling a lease is you need to prove that lease before you can

sell it. So that's why I'm going to come up here, give Shane a hand, see what

sort of gold we can find.

I mean, the buyer's very interested and he's got some areas he'd like us to

work. So we'll see if we can find some gold. And the more gold we find, the

better price it's going to get for Shane.

There's his car.

All right, we're in the right spot.

Shano!

If he's going to go that fast, he might as well go down and walk. Come on, hurry

up.

I never thought I'd see the day.

How are you going, Rusty? I'm in more of a hurry than what you are.

I've never done anything too quick in my life, you should know that.

So how far from here? Well, it's just up there, Russell, and I believe it's about

a 400 square metre area or something like that. And the new buyer?

The new buyer, well, that'll be depending on whether we can find some

gold here.

He wants five ounces, which is doable.

But we'll have to push hard.

I'll just go find some gold and prove it for him. Yeah, Rusty.

Put that one on.

Righty-o, we'll all jump on the front and drive.

No, that's not how it works around here.

No, come on, Rusty, I can drive.

You're going to the back, mate.

We want to get there today, not tomorrow.

Just hang on, that's all you've got to do.

What a place this is.

Look at the courts there, Russell.

This here to me looks probably the best part of the tenement I could be on. And

I've been here nearly eight years, so I should know.

Okay, Rusty, let's get into it.

Gold has never been off the lips of my family. Right back to my grandfather and

great-grandfather.

You know, you get gold fever.

I had it when I was in my early 30s.

I've had my journey.

I need to leave my grandchildren and my children a little bit better financially

off. Makes up for a little bit of guilt that I've had in my life for not being

there when my kids were there. I wasn't there for the Father's Day days.

I wasn't there at the Easter's. I only ever got home on Christmas before

Christmas. So it really hasn't been good enough.

It's great to have Russell come here to help me get the five ounces I need to be

able to get this sale over the line.

He's been with me, I don't know how long. Well done, Russell. Good job.

Plumbing first off, because that's what we are. We are both plumbers.

And later on, when I introduced him to prospecting, he followed me all the way

through this. That's a bloody good year.

Well, my goal this year is to get around 25 ounces of gold. That's what I'd like

to do. And also quit some of my tenement. I've got this buyer. People

are only going to be interested if they can get a quit out of it. So if I find

five ounces, I'll sell it for around 20-odd thousand.

We just have to confirm that this is where we want to dig. I mean, I don't

want to dig in the middle of nowhere.

So we'll find a few nuggets, confirm that there's gold-bearing ore here, and

then we'll bring the excavator over to get gold out of the dirt. I mean, look

how much you lose with spinifex. You lose that 100mm depth straight away. I

can't detect that at the top of the spinifex. There could be a lump of gold

under that, and you'd never hear it. So we've got to remove it, and it'll grow

back. And the spinifex is as tough as nails.

It feels like nails when it's gone through your skin.

Gee, that's a great sound. It's on the top.

This could be my first one of the season.

Jesus, this is good, heavy, promising material here.

There it is, a piece of gold. Look at that.

It's a good gram and it's probably got a value of about 300 bucks.

It's a really rugged piece of gold.

That means there's plenty more around here because it hasn't travelled.

If it's travelled, it'll be smooth.

And this is exactly what the buyer will want too. A concentrated area of gold.

Hey, Russell!

Yep, I found a piece.

I'm coming.

Shano's found a piece.

This could be the patch.

Let's have a look.

There it is there, Rusty.

Have a look at that.

Just here, right there.

Right there, Russell.

How about we just get a machine, open this up, take the top off. Make it

happen, Russell.

Move some dirt and make some money.

Just going to move this lower.

We've been at this lease now for quite a while and we've had some really good

results, but the ground is slowly starting to peter off a little bit. So

I've got a bit of a new spot down here that I'm hoping to find. Gold's flowed

downhill a little bit.

Former midwife Cheryl Munro... Then I'll go do it, Simon.

..and ex-butcher Simon Laws... I'm back at that.

..have reinvested over $200,000 of last season's profits into expanding their

mining operation.

deep in the remote goldfields of Western Australia.

All right, Simon, that's it already.

You know your hopper's full?

Yeah, I can see it's completely full.

Oh, the hopper's still got dirt in it, so it's too heavy to pull.

It's got about four tonne of dirt in there, so I'll bury the axle, which

always happens when we're loading the machine.

So I'll just dig a bit of that out. It'll come out a bit easier.

This year, we've brought a second dry blower, two extra loads to keep up with

the dirt. We've also upped the ante massively. We've put on four full-time

staff. Now that we've got the extra staff, we're trying to work on two

ounces a day. So we've got a lot more pressure. We're going to keep payable

dirt in front of us all the time. We'll be paying wages and keeping the machines

running. Got a copy, Sam?

Yeah, mate.

Better push up some dirt and push the track. Yeah, yeah, no worries, mate.

I'm a carpenter by trade. Not very good at it.

A couple of me mates were mucking around, doing a bit of detecting and got

me hooked. Now I'm stuffed for life.

Last year, we did really well. We actually made more than what we thought

we were going to make, but it's mainly hard work and determination.

I'm originally from Scotland, been in Australia for 19 years.

It was very scary when I first started.

I hadn't even driven a trailer.

First-time miners Cheryl and Simon... Choking too much dust.

...were tested by a brutal debut season.

That's amazing, isn't it? That means we can build on next year, maybe a second

blower, another machine.

So this year we've made ourselves fully mobile so we can do a lot of tribute

work. They basically all work someone else's lease, do all the work, all the

expense, all the rehabilitation, and they receive 20% of the gold that we

find, so they can be sitting home on the couch watching the footy and earning

really good money if we're finding really good gold.

It's not like my gold's leaving.

That'll always be there waiting for us. It's a little bit like our safety guard.

To stay afloat, the team rely on two $80,000 dry blowers.

As pay dirt is fed into a hopper, a mesh grate filters out larger rocks, allowing

finer material to drop into riffle trays below.

Air and vibration blow away lighter waste, leaving heavier material to be

further processed through the sluice.

We've got four buckets of dirt in the dry blower for 12 hours work, and then

we put it through the sluice here, and there's a little mat here.

and the fine gold can get caught in the mat and then what happens is at the end

once we wash all the dirt we empty out the mat and empty out the sluice tray

here pan that off and we'll see what the result is and the globe was actually all

right to begin with but it's kind of thinned out quite a bit because you know

we set that ambitious target of a hundred ounces which we need to trade to

maintain the team that we have and the machinery we have so

It's exciting when we've got a bigger team, but nerve-wracking at the same

time that we have to get gold. The pressure's on us more than ever was.

You'll see a little bit of gold. That's only two buckets, but you can see a

little bit here.

Could be better, but not too bad.

Just pushing up a bit of dirt, trying to keep up with these two blowers.

Hopefully, if the ground is really good, we can work towards building a wet plant

so the weather doesn't stop us as much.

Mark, how are you going?

Yep, yep.

Yep, yeah, righto, understandable.

I'll speak to Cheryl tonight and I'll get back to you.

How's it looking?

Yeah, it's cold there, Simon, but definitely thinned out a bit.

Yeah. We're really starting to run out of options here.

Well, just had a bit of an interesting phone call.

Mark, he's got a lease he wants us to work. It's had hundreds of ounces found,

just detecting.

Oh, great. It's never been dry blowed. Where is it? I'll show you.

We're way up here, and where he wants us to work is there.

Koguli. Yeah.

Yeah, that's not around the corner.

So it's about 800Ks if you go the shortcut through the bush.

That's a massive commitment financially for him. Yeah, 30, 40 grand without

considering the wages of, you know, the guys towing stuff backwards and

forwards. Yeah. We've got to take everything there. And we've only got to

the end of the week to let him know whether we're interested or not. We need

an answer by the end of the week. Yeah. It's the biggest decision we've had to

make moving-wise.

Yeah, absolutely.

If we stay here, we could go bankrupt in a matter of weeks. Yeah.

Big decisions.

What do you mean you sold it? I sold it. Our first one-ounce nugget.

Why would you sell it to somebody else?

I gave you first dibs. No, you didn't. I came to you. You didn't have the money.

I sold it. How much did you get for it?

I sold it for like $5,000.

That means you've got a sentimental bone in your body.

Gold is money, and I needed the money.

Man, these roads have really gone gnarly.

Are you taking it easy through here, if I were you? I was the first one to

handle that. I gave birth to that thing.

I stuck my hand down into the earth, pulled it out.

Oh, look at this.

Why don't you hop out and have a look?

You want me to drive? Hell no.

I reckon it's doable, but I'd be looking for another way round.

Nah, nah, I'm just going to send it.

You just watch this, mate.

Don't get stuck.

All right, Bart, let's go.

Let's find some gold.

Lifelong mates, 51-year-old Darren Bray and 55-year-old Anthony Stein are

starting their season over 3,500 kilometres from their homes in Tasmania

in the remote gold fields of far north Queensland.

We've basically set up a fly-in, fly-out operation where we travel up every few

months for a few months at a time. So I'm leaving three young kids and my wife

at home back in Tasmania.

Pretty hard being so far away from them for so long.

We've traded our life in Tasmania to come up here in Ruffet. Up here, you've

got a chance of striking it. One big patch can change your life.

Alright mate, we are officially on open ground in gold country. With gold prices

soaring. The pair are determined to stake their own lease on newly available

ground, close to an area they mined five years ago.

It's been under licence for 20 years, mate, so we've got to prove this ground,

prove it carries gold. We're going to be the first to hammer in those pegs, get

the application sent off.

You know the drill, once these things come up, they go pretty quick.

If we set ourselves a 20-ounce target this season, this could be the ground

that gets us there. Yeah, yeah.

So we just pull in, set up camp, and let's go for a walk.

Let's do some detecting, go find some gold.

You going to give me a hand? Hand with that. Little Hilson on wheels.

I've just got a pop-top camper, which is pretty comfy, and it's going to be

sleeping in his swag.

It snores like a freight train, so I'm going to be a little bit of distance

between us.

We run off grid out here, so we run our fridge off solar power.

How about a second bedroom?

We've got a pretty comfortable kitchen here.

It's just a mattress.

It's got a midget screen.

Keep all the bugs and snakes out.

This is the en suite.

Queen-size bed.

I've got windows.

Let the breeze in.

It's still going.

You've only got three poles, mate.

Mate, this is all you need out in the bush.

It's what the old-timers used.

It might be all you need, but it's not all you want.

There you have it.

The North Queensland Hilton.

I've always been interested in gold ever since a young fella.

It's like finding treasure.

Didn't think much of it for quite a few years until I met Darren. He started

talking about it. He was very interested.

He bought himself a detector and he started finding gold.

We decided to give the different type of gold mining another shot. I got burnt

pretty bad the last time we decided to do something. I think we ran a little

bit too big, too fast.

Back in 2020, we ran a wash plant, which was a bit of a disaster.

We ran three trucks. We had a 30-tonne excavator, a 15-tonne loader. We were

making about 10 ounces a week, but it didn't end well. Machinery breaks down,

fuel costs. We had a lot of problems.

this season we'd just like to improve some ground peg a lease and then use

some small equipment to scrape the top get the nuggets that we can't pick up

with a detector in a pick i don't want to get burned like last time i can't

afford it it just about sank me oh look at this detector hole

seeing that detector hole tells me that other people are out here chasing gold

we need to beat them to it

It's not a cheap process securing ground.

There's all sorts of fees, so we want to detect the ground first and make sure it

carries and make sure this ground is the one.

Yes, we've got to find that patch first.

Oh, there you have it.

This is the sign he needed.

Let's see if it's come out of the ground.

Oh, it's out.

There it is, our first nuggy.

Woo-hoo!

Look out!

Hey, Daz, are you copy?

Copy, Ant.

You really need to get over here, mate. Copy that.

Maybe he's found something.

Maybe.

What have you got?

Guess who's buying the beers tonight.

You're joking. Check it out.

A little maybe half gram.

Here's 100 bucks for you, mate. It's a start, mate. Good stuff. Well done.

Woo!

How'd you go?

I had a very nice siesta under the tree, in the shade, and I got up and I found

two nice little nuggets.

Can you imagine how many you would have found if you weren't sleeping under the

tree? I found them just on the other side of that creek there, so I'd be

probably on the edge of that.

What do you think? All right, we'll see how we go. We'll run down the edge right

now.

This could be the roof, Shane.

As long as we've got some depth, here's what we want, some depth.

In the remote Pilbara region, Rusty has brought in his mini excavator from his

fantasy gully lease 20 kilometres away, hoping it will break through the tough

ground around a newly discovered gold patch.

The good thing about the excavator is just we can clean the spin effects away.

And then if we start digging down, down to that deeper gold, because the

detector will only work so deep.

There's a nice sound there.

Oh!

Shane's on the one.

It's just a nice sound. I don't know yet how big it is.

See, it's just there somewhere.

Yeah, that sounds better.

There it is there.

Nice bit of gold, Rusty!

You got one?

Yeah, it is rough as guts, Russell.

It's small, maybe 0.3 grams, so $50 at best, but it's great colour.

Okay, we're on. Let's just keep going.

The good thing about the price of gold is it's made all the values of the

leases increase quite substantially too.

That's why we're here, to prove the lease so Shane can sell it.

This is hard.

What the hell is that?

Oh, no.

Shane? Yes, Rusty?

Oh, look at this. Look.

Look, it's sticking out through the edge.

It's done track pads.

Well, we need this like a hole in the head, Russell.

We're dead in the water now.

Oh, it's broken the pads out of the tracks.

Those four of them are gone.

They must be here somewhere.

Oh, they're broken off in here.

That's a drive sprocket, and these are your drive teeth.

And so they sit in there, and they're stuck to the track normally, and that

turns around and grabs it and drives it again. And without these, I've got no

drive, and it's going to break the track clean in half.

Unbelievable. So what are we going to do, Russell?

I'll have to go back to Fantasy and see if we've got another one there. It's not

a big job, but still, I've got to go back and get it.

Well, Rusty, let's not waste any time. Just move on.

I'll go and detect and see if I can pick up a little bit.

I'll just battle on here on my own, Russell.

I better have the spare one, otherwise that's the end of this trip.

Here we are in Kalgoorlie.

Well, here's hoping they're going good Simon, hey, because it's a big risk to

me. Yeah, it's probably going to run into the 40 grand mark just to get

everything here.

before you actually make a gram of gold. And we're leaving gold to perhaps find

more gold, but, you know, it could be a million-dollar payday.

Cheryl and Simon have just weeks of reliable pay dirt left at their main

operation, so they've travelled more than 800km south, over half the length

of Britain, in search of a lifeline.

You're not going to travel 800km away fully set up camp.

and everything like that if it's the same gold it's got to be better yeah it

all comes down to what we can see in these samples high risk they've been

given the opportunity to relocate their entire operation here but doing so means

paying a percentage of any gold produced to the leaseholder yeah i'll get you to

bring up your maps because it's in here somewhere yeah it's probably up here

about 400 meters and then to your left oh yeah i can see the old workings in

here now so someone's got a scratch around in here oh that was a big drive

it was we made it a lot of old working so grab just some random samples just

here and there and then we can you know see if we can see a speck so we've got

something to back up our decision really all right what's a half a million dollar

target we've set for ourselves yeah it's a big one let's go and scratch up some

dirt and get some gold

It's a really big lease, probably over a thousand hectares. We've started here

because there's a lot of old-timer pushings here. You don't do that many

pushings if you're not finding any gold. This whole lease has only ever been

scraped and detected.

There's never been a dry blower on here, so hopefully we can mop up and get that

really fine gold that they couldn't detect.

That's our bread and butter.

I'll just go up a little bit from here and a little bit from there, so we get a

bit of an average then maybe.

The best bit is that while we're out here searching for new ground, we've got

the team back at Mika working.

You know, the wheels are still turning. Normally, you know, down tools, you're

not making any money while you're looking for new ground.

We actually go back and there's going to be dirt in the buckets ready for us to

pan off.

The thing is, with the move, yes, money is a massive, massive factor in it, but

we've also got...

A lovely team of people that we've got to look after and feed and make sure

that we get gold on the other side.

They're all willing to make the move for us.

We want to make it worth the while. It could cost their jobs if we don't get

enough gold.

It's a big decision. It's a really big decision.

What's your thoughts, then?

It looks good.

Like, it's got all the signs to it. And if this is where they found the least

amount of nuggets, the other areas should be really good.

And the thing is, if we don't take this deal... He's going to give it to someone

else. Yeah. And are we missing out on a massive payday?

Yeah, and I guess we've only got to the end of the week to make that decision.

It's just got to prove itself, really. Yeah. We just want that nice little tail

in the pan. So you only think, well, two specks for the two buckets, but you

times that by thousands, that's going to be a lot of gold.

Let's hope there's some speckies in there.

Yeah. All right, let's go, lads.

That tail in the pan determines our future, really.

Keep going mate.

There you go. That's mechanical leverage people.

There you go, look out!

Still in there mate?

That sounds better.

There it is.

Look at that. Now we're talking.

Much better.

Oh, that's like, that might be a four or five gram amount.

At 5,000 bucks an ounce, mate.

It's adding up.

We need a few more of those.

That'll start paying wages.

Let's find some more.

Where you find gold, there's usually its friends with it. So nice and, oh, here

we go.

Another target, Ant. Another target.

It's almost coming too easy.

Right at the base of the tree too.

That's a great spot.

There we go.

We've got two targets right next to each other. We have.

Well, how about we get this one first? Okay. All right.

Let's see. Oh, look at that.

Oh, no way.

Another five, six grams.

Look at the size of that.

Oh, my God. That's got some weight.

Look at that.

And we've got one here under your foot, you reckon?

It should be an easy one for you, mate.

Two in one hole, mate. I love when that happens.

Oh, there it is.

Look at that.

That's another beauty, mate.

We're coming thick and fast.

We're going to peg this. It's pain.

Let's get the GPS.

Mark the spot.

Locked in.

All right, let's go.

Oh!

So once we've got a lease peg, we can use small machines to scrape the top off

the ground and get anything deeper down that we missed from the surface.

I've plotted out a 75 hectare area around patch.

We're going to make sure our coordinates are bang on too. If we make a mistake on

those coordinates, the mines department won't even accept the lease.

To secure their mining rights, they must first hammer in four metal pegs to mark

out the boundaries of a new lease.

before lodging the coordinates with the mines department.

Mate, just looking on this map, we're getting pretty close to where we're

going to put our first peg in.

Excellent.

Hey, what's that?

That's new tracks. You've got to be joking. Let's get out and have a look.

We've just spotted some tracks, and this is right on the area that we want to

peg. Mate, these are fresh tracks. These aren't ours.

So this means that somebody else is out here. Got to be joking.

Mate, is that a car?

Mate, let's go.

Let's go.

How can someone be here before we get here?

Let's go.

Mate, I can't believe someone beat us out here.

We've got a spare at least.

Well, we're going to open this up. Got to crack the valve in here.

Yep. And then let the idler gear come back. Oh, yeah. And that'll let the

track down.

Okay. You watch this. It'll start to sag down in a second.

Rusty was able to get another track from his lease, so we've just got to change

it out and get back to it.

It leads you around this side.

Yep. All right. Now, what you want to do now is this bar here. Yep. I want you to

push it backwards.

Okay. Okay? Yep. Only when I tell you. Okay. If I yell, I want you to stop.

Okay. All right. Start going.

All right. Keep going.

Keep going.

Yep, yep, whoop, whoop.

Righto, bit more. Bit more.

Keep going.

Righto, that's it.

She's off.

Stop, stop. Stop there.

You know what? I had to do all the heavy work. Don't hurt yourself, though.

You all right or what?

Ah, spinifex up me arse. How do you feel?

I told you to be careful. Now they're getting the new one back on.

What can I do now, Russell? Oh, stay out of the way if you want. Don't want to

get hurt.

I should be able to take care of this.

That's it.

We got it, Shane. We got it.

Okay, Rusty, let's get back on the gold.

We've found some nice nuggets already, so just a few more, Shane, to be able to

get a good dollar for this lease.

I mean, for a lease that's not very good, you'll pay $5,000 or $6,000 for

it. For one that's good, you'll pay $60,000 to $70,000. I've seen leases for

$100,000 to $100,000.

because they're good gold-proving leases. The gold price today doesn't pay

long to recoup it.

It's got to prove that it's here, that the gold is here.

Jeez, that's a nice sound.

It's either a very large piece, I don't know what it is, but let's dig it out

and have a look.

Come on, where are you?

Come on, the gold gods are going to start looking after me.

I can't work this out. There seems to be there and not there. So obviously a

couple together here.

Still there.

Oh, there it is there.

That's a nice little bit of gold we found. Look at it. You know, always

check. There you are.

There's another sound. That's why I had so much trouble.

Right, I've got it in the scoop.

Look at that.

So, there you are. Two together.

this is what you want to find really good size gold probably about four or

five hundred bucks worth there radio silky eh oh

listen to that brother let's have a look

come on always separate your material as much as you can

ah it's in here it's in here

Look at this bit of blood. Look at this, a bit of quartz.

Oh, there's gold attached to this. This is off a reef. That means it hasn't

travelled very far.

Russell!

A thousand reef gold.

Well done, Shano.

We'd better take another scrape off this.

Well, if you've done that bit now, I'll come and dig that deeper.

There's probably more down deeper.

Okay, Rusty.

Well, we're doing a cha-cha, Russell. Swap around.

And when Shane's had a couple of really good bites, oh, geez, that's hard. What

I've caught here, Shane's found a specie and a few nuggets here.

So I'll go through now and I'll dig this out again and get down deeper.

Because when the gold travels through, it travels on the bottom, on its deepest

part. So that's where we need to get to.

He's found the floaters and a specie, so it needs to be fed by the source.

So worth digging again.

It's cribbing up the temperature, believe me.

Whoa, there's a sound.

Okay, let's have a look. Oh, this is the first sound of this new scrape. So let's

have a look.

Oh, nailed it first up.

Well, no wonder I nailed it. Look at the size of that.

This is a lovely piece of gold shaped like United Kingdom.

Scotland up the top there and Wales in the corner. And that little bit there

would be... what they called Swansea, and over the other side would be

Cornwell, looking at each other.

This piece of gold would be worth a lot more money than the value of the gold. I

would say it would be worth $600 or $700.

Rusty!

You got another one?

I'm not coming over there. My bones are too weary, Russell.

Hey, you've been on your knees the whole time.

I have been on my knees picking out nuggets.

Yeah, Rusty, have a way of that.

That's got to be at least an ounce. I think it's every part of that, Russell.

It's not big, but it's gold. That's the main thing.

And a specie too.

You've done well for the day.

70-year-old and digging nuggets like a champ.

Now, I've got to get these five ounces of gold for this buyer. If we don't

succeed, no deal. So when we weigh it up there, can we just think about a bit of

rusty magic on the way out, okay? We can do that. Let's give him five ounces

first. I don't care how we get it to him, but we're going to get it to him,

Shane. The last hurrah.

Make it happen.

I just can't believe someone's here.

Yeah, and so close to our patch.

All right, mate, we are close now. This is it. This is the spot. The gold

drifters, Darren and Anthony, are racing to hammer in four corner pegs. Just pull

in here.

To carve out a new 75-hectare mining lease from newly available ground.

All right, let's pegs in.

Which way?

This way. Keep going.

But with a rival prospector in the area, a single overlapping claim... could cost

them the lease all right remember we're going to get this perfectly in line

right okay okay tell me where mate all right this is it this is the spot this

is our northeast post this is the most important post this is the one the mines

department checked so we're going to get this in first we're going to put our

coordinates in name of the company date of peg we've already seen someone in

here this morning we don't know whether they've pegged anything or not we're not

taking any chances so we're just going to peg right now Because if they peg an

area which falls within where we want to peg, we miss out and we've got to go

home. Okay.

All right, mate, I'm taking a photo for evidence, all right? All right, here we

go. Jeez.

Beautiful, let's go.

One down, three to go, mate.

All right, mate, we're getting pretty close now to our next spot.

Okay, tell me when to pull over. Mate, just hold on.

What, here?

No, a bit further? Keep going, keep going.

Righto. All right, pull it in here. All right.

Grab it and follow me.

All right, just up here.

Mate, this looks good right here.

All right.

This lines up perfectly with the northeast.

Mate, I don't see anyone here. I think we're the first here. That's good news.

We're good.

Another photo.

Two down.

Let's go.

It's just up here.

Okay. Let's just get this done.

Mate, is that him?

Oh, what the?

He's holding a peg.

I can't believe this. He's picking a lease.

You've got to be joking. Let's just get this in.

Come on.

Grab your stuff.

Let's go, let's go.

Mate, this is it.

We're on point here.

All right, all right.

Oh, he's leaving. Got his peg down.

Mate, he's got a peg in.

All right, let's go.

Come on, we've got to beat them for the last peg.

Let's go.

Go, go, go, go, go.

Let's hammer it.

We've got three pegs in. We've got one to go.

We've got date stamps, time stamps and all of our posts.

Mate, you better not beat us.

Mate, we'll be good.

All right, pull in here.

Let's go.

Come on, mate.

It's the last peg.

New morale.

All right, that'll do, that'll do.

Final peg in.

All right, let's timestamp this.

Now we need to lodge the application and hopefully secure this lease.

I'm so eager to find out what the samples are that Simon's doing from

Calgary.

Because it is a bit of a head mess.

It's not just about moving the team and everything. It's a massive financial

outlay to go there. Like, we're at least going to spend $40,000 to get there.

And even if we do get a positive result with the sample, that could be the best

it's going to get.

You just don't know.

Cheryl and Simon.

have returned from a 1,600-kilometre round trip exploring new ground.

If their 40-kilogram samples come back at a high enough grade, it could see

them relocate their entire operation.

This could be a great opportunity and a perfect timing as well because the gold

has been dropping off on this lease, so we were thinking about moving on

somewhere else, but...

Moving on somewhere else down the road, not 800 kilometres away.

It's a bit nerve-wracking, really. I've never really done any work around

Kalgoorlie. It's all been up around sort of this top end of WA.

So I'm just panning off our Kalgoorlie samples now. I've put them all into the

one batch, basically, so we can have a look at what we got out of all the

samples altogether, and it can give us a bit of an indication on how we're going

to go.

Nice little amount of fine gold there.

Few specks for just a couple of hand buckets of dirt.

Imagine how many specks you're going to get when you put through 900 tonne from

loader buckets.

And then you look at what we've got there for eight hours of the dry blower.

That's a lot to think about. Do we go...

take the gamble on this 800 k's away move all our gear stay here and continue

to get that but then that could drop off any day so yeah a bit of a head scratch

of what one we go with there yeah not a decision to be taken lightly

got away with the gold Cheryl what

a week hey yeah big decisions to be made it all comes down to this little jar and

that little jar but it's not just down to that either it's down to you know

we've got so much to think about the team financially the risk yeah we've set

ourselves the target of two ounces a day yep so we've got to get 14 ounces for

the week to see are we staying or are we moving on yeah okay there's

three ounces

four five six seven eight nine it's gonna be

close

10, 12.36.

It'd be close to about 62K for the week.

That's just under then, isn't it? Just under.

That makes it harder in a way because it's just under.

I know.

And our sampling, what have we got there?

That's probably about a gram in there.

Yeah. And then you try and imagine that's what we got out of our little

sample buckets to do a 900 tonne a day.

It could be pretty rich. It could be very rich.

Or did we pick the best part?

Or did we pick the worst part? Yeah, that's exactly right.

Well, the thing is, it is thinning out here, but it has been good to us up

until now. So do we stay and hope that it gets a bit better again?

Well, I don't want Mark to ring me up in three months' time and say, you know,

you're stuffed up there.

Someone's doing it and they've pulled, you know, a million bucks' worth of gold

out of there.

Yeah. I reckon we go.

Me too. Let's have a crack.

Let's do it. Applause.

Big move.

First way up of your last season. It's been a big week, hasn't it? It has. We

managed to get over a few issues. We had a breakdown. We got over that. And we

managed to find gold still. So I think we're going all right, Russell. It's

been a good week. Yep. It's been enjoyable.

Come on, Rusty, weigh it up. How enjoyable has it been, though? I was

about to see.

Oh, it's 1.062.

That's decent money. And then the specie, that'll crush up and give us a

few more grams out of that.

Okay, that's about 1.4, so I reckon about 1.3. So we're going to go all

right. That's about $6,500.

Well, Russell, we need a total of five ounces to sell the tenement. At the

moment, we've got probably an ounce and a half, so we've got to get three and a

half ounces to make it happen.

And we're not going to get that detecting, are we? No way in the world,

Russell. We can either sluice or dry blow.

It looks like I've got a job to do, haven't I? I've got to find a dry

blower. In the middle of nowhere, Shane, I'll just pick my fingers.

And do a Miss Jeannie, shall I? Well, Russell, sometimes you have a little bit

of luck and you might be able to just pull something out of your hat. There's

a lot of people around here and you're well connected.

Come on, Rusty, let's move on.

It's been a pretty full-on week. Mate, that was a huge week. It was a mission

just getting here. Oh, mate.

How about that guy that nearly poached our patch?

Oh, yeah.

Thank God we got it all submitted, well, pegged and submitted.

Paperwork in.

Let's hope everything goes to plan. Yep. We can get our gear. We can go back out

and find some more gold. Yeah. In the meantime, should we see what we got for

the week? Absolutely. That's what I'm here for.

0.84 of an ounce. 0.84 of an ounce.

$5,000 an ounce. Yeah. Mate, $4,200.

Nice. It won't keep the bank managers off our back, but hey, it's a start.

Well, it goes towards covering the cost of just getting here, which is good.

It's just the beginning. I'm sure there's more there. Good start.

Problem is, we're about 19 and a bit ounces short of our target. Yeah, we've

got a lot of work to do. We've got a heap of work to do. Well, let's hope

this approval comes through soon and we can start opening this whole area up.

Let's find some more. All right.

Bye.