Original subtitles

This is the last thing we need right now while we're on the good gold.

Want to get this fixed, mate, and done before this weather hits, hey?

You got it? Got it.

This weather's not looking too good, Dad.

Weather's got us down and dump truck's got us down.

Hoping the starter motor fixes it because we really need this truck.

If it's not the problem...

We're stuffed.

I was just hoping I didn't do anything to cause it because if this goes down, I

know there's not much else we can really do out here. We'll be dead in the water

for a while, especially if this weather keeps up. Won't be able to do much out

here.

Hope I haven't stuffed it up on you, Dad.

Mate, you haven't stuffed it up. It's just a mechanical problem, okay?

Yeah, well, maybe get that done and I can try to turn it on. Oh, yeah, well,

you get in here and try and get this done.

All right, Cades, hit the key, bud.

All right, three, two, one.

Did it?

Yeah, I did it.

Nothing. Are you serious?

I'm deadly serious.

That's not good.

Caden, grab me the light tester, mate. This is a real bugger.

Just hit it again?

Yeah, right.

Three, two, one.

Got a bit of a problem.

I reckon there's a signal that from the key down to the solenoid, it's cutting

it out.

We know we don't have a problem with the starter motor, but now we know we've got

a potentially even bigger problem.

Every minute we spend trying to fix this truck just means more wasted time than

we could be spending trying to get gold out of the ground.

Well, right now, we haven't got a dump truck.

Caden had been using it, you know, last week, and it just died on him.

We've just put a new starter motor in it.

I don't know what we're going to do, to be honest.

This is the last thing we need right now.

We're going to have to head to the German gully, mate, looks of it. Yeah,

right.

Bloody hell. We definitely can't use the dump truck anymore.

We could potentially get to work stripping down in the old method, but

Caddo's is absolutely saturated and the ground is really unstable and I don't

want to risk a collapse happening down that hole.

So we're going to have to change tact right now and set up a German gully.

This season, Brent Shannon, his 18-year-old son Caden, and mining

partner Jaden Perry's hunt for record-breaking nuggets at Caddo's

Paddock delivered a $200,000 payday.

But now, with Jaden sidelined by illness and the hunt for monster nuggets on

hold, they've travelled 26 kilometres south to the 164 hectare German

gully lease.

We've picked up, we've moved to German gully, trying to get some work done

here. And I tell you what, it's definitely a lot better working in dry

material rather than that mud and slop.

So how we do this, what we call the Nev method of digging, is that as we're

scraping away, Caden comes in. It always looks closer than it is, but I can't

reach the excavator. I'm still more than a detector width away from it.

Make sure when I come in here, that's when the excavator swings around away

from me. And then when I come back around, I've got plenty of distance from

the bucket to walk back around and get ready to start detecting the new fresh

layer. Caden really stepped up to the plate.

This season, he's really proven himself more than capable of the job at hand.

It was always my dream going up to work with my dad. Now I'm getting to do it

full time.

They had to have the trust in me to operate this machine around him down in

the hole, doing such a precise job. It's a big deal for me.

With Jaden still recovering, not being out here, we're under the pump.

126 ounces for the season.

We need to keep cracking along because the gold game's unpredictable.

We don't want the weather to turn on us like it did out at Caddo's. Turn

everything into mud and slop. It'd make an absolute pain to deal with, so...

While we've got the good weather and while we're ahead, we're going to keep

cracking and keep ahead of the curve and hopefully keep making good progress on

our season target.

You got a target? Yeah, mate, yeah.

This actually doesn't sound like a bad bit of gold.

Try and dig around it.

Try not to hit it.

Because if it is a nice pretty nugget, it's always worth its gold weight. But

if they're a real special nugget or a big nugget, you get collective value on

top of that.

And sometimes that collective value could be, you know, as little as 5%, but

in some cases it could be 20% above the gold price for it.

All right, got it.

Oh, there it is. Ha-ha!

Look at that.

Hey!

That looks like a nice bit, Dad.

Yeah, Cage, I reckon it's got to be, mate. Got to be around an ounce and a

half or thereabouts.

Credible to think that's a $7,500 nugget right there. We could be on to something

pretty special here. The ground keeps turning gold up like this. I will not be

complaining. Well, let's get back into it while the sun is shining.

She'll be coming round the corner when she comes.

He's coming.

Pressure's on.

We've literally gone from detecting to now operating a full-scale mine.

Keep it coming, mate. Keep it coming.

You know, we had Carl and Grant basically catch up with us at the last

weigh-in, and, you know, they want us to help move pay dirt and process it before

the wet season comes in.

Righto, mate. Good to go.

Roger.

Oh, she's feeling heavy. I'm hoping that's all gold.

I'm driving down to the wetland to put this dirt in it, you know, carrying

thousands of dollars of paid dirt in the back. We've only got limited time left

out here, and we're going to push it pedal to the metal and get every bit of

gold we can out of this dirt before our time runs still.

Yeah, so I'll just wait another couple of minutes, just let those two big rocks

come out.

This is really awesome to watch. This is all new to me. Like, you look at this.

This whole thing, right? It is working hard. I'm used to doing all the work

with my detector, digging the holes. And now there's this machine that's got this

beautiful process of just refining all the gold out of this pater. I'm looking

forward to seeing what this thing does because it's got to get all the gold

that we missed with the detectors.

On my setup here, I've got a weightometer.

This is telling me how many tonnes an hour we're doing and what we do for the

day. The dirt comes up the belt, goes in the trommel, it washes it, gets all the

gold off, the mud off, comes down to here, there's a 10ml screen in there,

then into the concentrator.

This week's just been hectic. We've got wet season coming right on our doorstep.

We're trying to get through 1,000 tonnes before it starts raining.

We're going to be out of here.

It's been really good having Kyle and Jackie here.

Massive help.

I'm feeling like this is great. This is quite the experience.

I have never done anything like this before.

I've gone from prospecting gullies out in the bush to processing 1,000 tonnes

of dirt before the week's over.

When you go prospecting, you're picking up one nugget at a time, two nuggets out

of a hole if you're lucky.

Here, we're going to have a tray full of gold ready to pick up.

Never would have thought that we would be sitting in this position where we are

right now.

This season... Welcome to the Territory.

..Jackie Bazzetti and Kyle Wilson left behind their homes in Queensland and

Western Australia to travel over 2,000 kilometres to the Northern Territory.

Need a hand to do some exploration work.

If you're any good, you can stay. If you're not, well, back you go.

Hired by lease owner Grant Farris and his foreman, Carl Skyring, to track down

new gold deposits.

That's a booming signal.

..across his vast 450 square kilometres of leases.

Making friends with someone like Grant, who's very successful in the industry,

may be big things for us in the future.

Now they've been tasked to process as much pay dirt as possible through

Grant's $250,000 custom wash plant before the looming wet season shuts them

down for months.

Beautiful.

and forth like six times on that bobcat.

We've cleared the tray out so everything's going up the conveyor belt.

It had a bit of a blockage before.

Kyle's taken all the oversize over. That's going to get detected soon once

all the noise settles down.

And Grant's got us working into the night because he reckons this is going

to be a good haul.

Look at Kyle. He's just still going.

Go Kyle!

Look at him.

He reckons he's got a master.

Hey Kyle, hey mate.

You have a habit with putting me in little machines with no aircon, don't

you? I know what you're doing, mate. Yeah, it might put a bit of hardness in

you. You're good to go, eh? We're going to work into the night, mate. Probably

about midnight.

The sun's about to go down. Look at that. Beautiful.

Mate. Eh?

Have a look at this, would you?

Stop it.

The days are hot and hard, but the moments of the day when it's like this.

Yeah. Where else would you want to be, right?

You forget about all that stuff, eh?

All the troubles of life just disappear.

I'm seeing gold.

I'm seeing lots of gold. Oh, wow. Look, you're going to end up with hundreds and

hundreds of...

Small ones. Look at that.

Literally. All stuck in the mess. There's hundreds of them. I just can't

get over how many nuggets are in there.

Look at that. I can't even think of how many days of swinging a metal detector

it would take me to find anything like this. And we've done this in just a few

hours. I can't believe this is your life.

Thanks for the help. Well, I reckon we take this, sort the rest of that out for

processing. But I don't know about you guys, but I think we all deserve a

drink. Yep. Oh, man. So good.

Then we'll get stuck back into it tomorrow.

How's it been going down here? Yeah, I think the dirt might be a little bit

damp. It's kind of getting hung up in the hopper a bit, running through very,

very slow.

I can see that Tommy's stuff's only coming through sluggish as well, so

he's... Sort of picking around, trying to find the dry spot.

Well, we haven't got any gold in the scales yet, which is getting a bit

worrying because we've got that pressure of, you know, wages and it just feels

like we're just spending, spending, spending and not making anything at the

moment. Yeah, that's right. We keep on digging into the savings. You can feel

that pressure building up, can't you? Yeah.

I'm just setting up, but I just noticed we've only got a quarter of a tank of

water left.

Yeah. And given we're going to have to get showers and stuff, we're going to

have to go and get water as soon as possible, really.

Yeah. All right, so I'll go and have a look at that. And then, yeah, best of

luck here. Got to make something happen.

Fingers crossed. All right. See you later. Bye.

So in this lease here, they've found a lot of nuggets in the past with, like,

scrape and detect.

They found almost 12,000 ounces here, so they're hoping that there's going to be

some fine gold left behind.

So that's the whole reason why we're here. We're just going to try and do a

couple of buckets from a different pile of dirt, and hopefully we can find some

dry dirt amongst it and see if we can get any result.

It's really, really different here working in Kalgoorlie ground.

There has been a little bit of rain in this area before we got here, so that's

hence the little bit of dampness and a bit of puddles lying around, but it does

get a lot more rain here than what we did up north.

The worst-case scenario at the moment is if it rains here and we can't get any

tests done properly.

We're doing this lease on a tribute. So a tribute is where we do all the work

and we give the leaseholder a percentage of what we find.

So the deal we've got is we'll give him 20% of all the gold and we keep the rest

and all the expense that go along with that.

We've just got to really push through and try and start making gold straight

away. It cost us 40 grand just to get here.

We're hoping that we can repay that as quick as we can. So I've got to make

this work.

Trotting your caravan, trotting your ute. It's all going to go there

eventually.

After exhausting gold deposits at their Meekatharra lease in Western

Australia... So that's us, Simon, out of here, off to Newloose.

..partners Cheryl Munro and Simon Laws, along with their team, moved their

entire operation, 800km, to the Atlas lease on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie.

It is worrying, and I do have butterflies in my belly thinking,

I hope there is gold in the ground.

The pressure is on.

But with $12,000 in daily running costs, they need the new ground to deliver 20

ounces by week's end.

A lot of people, I don't think they realise how much hard work it actually

is and how much of an operation that we're trying to do here. But hopefully,

you know, persistence does pay off and it's all worthwhile in the end.

So this is what water we've got left, so probably just over a quarter there. One

of these pods would probably last us a week. We use it for everything, washing

your hands, having a shower, preparing food.

We need it for sluicing the gold, just so we can live, probably just as

valuable as gold.

So I'm just having a look at the mining maps.

They've got a hydrology point feature so we can tell where there's, like, tanks

and windmills and dams. And there's a possible bore.

Not far from us, only 10 kilometres away. So I've put the coordinates in my

phone and we'll go there and see if hopefully I get some water.

It's been a massive gamble coming to Kalgoorlie. I mean, the move alone cost

us about $40,000 this lease.

It's got a fantastic history.

But the biggest concern is there's not going to be enough gold. You know, it

could... It could make us go bust. It could make us go boom. We don't know

what's ahead of us. And we don't want to let staff go.

And particularly Tommy, it's his home.

You feel like a sense of responsibility.

Where is everything right now?

Yeah, yeah, push.

You can either push from this way up or push from there back.

Yeah. Yeah, I love it, yeah. I was homeless in Perth.

Yeah, homeless. And then I met Simon. So I stopped and didn't get my job until

now. It's a better life, you know.

He's an absolute workhorse.

I've got to actually drag him out of the loader. He'll do 20 hours a day if I let

him. He's earning really good money and he's sending pretty much all of it back

home and he's, you know, brought cars and houses all for his family and he's

supporting all them and we love our Tommy.

This new adventure, it's a bit of a make or break. We have to make it here or

we're really going to struggle.

The chance of big gold isn't really as prominent as it is over at Kalo's

Paddock. But what we do have a really good shot at is high quantities of fine

gold. So what we're going to do is we'll pull it out and stockpile it on the

surface so that once we're done here, we'll be able to grab that stockpile,

move it to the little wash plant and give that a test. See what fine gold we

might have here.

It just stopped.

Alright, see if it'll fire back up, mate.

Absolutely nothing. No lights, no nothing.

Turn the key, nothing's happening.

Alright, I'll come up and have a look, mate.

Hey, mate.

I can hear it just stopped. I don't know what happened. There's no power to

anything at all. Not a single flicker of a dash light.

Yeah, you're right.

Nothing. Dead as a doornail.

Couldn't happen at the worst possible time. We're just starting to get some

gold. So it's bloody frustrating.

All we're going to try and do is just hope it's just a battery, maybe an

alternator, something simple that we can fix.

Right, Codes.

Let's see if it's something simple, mate. Just get that multimeter out.

This is a 24-volt system. So that should show either 24 or 28 volts.

What have we got?

25.5, Dad. 25.5.

All right, so there's nothing wrong with those batteries.

Let's just check these isolators.

That's all we've got there, mate. 25.5.

Well, we've got power to everything, Caden. But what we haven't got power to

is the actual engine and the cab. So I reckon we've got a bigger problem than

what we can fix, mate.

So I'm going to have to make a couple of phone calls and maybe get a technician

out to see if they can diagnose the problem.

Let's either fix this or we're dead in the water here, mate.

Fire out.

Dad did warn me the gold game is a tough game.

It's harder than it looks not always Glory and glamour and I

thought he was over complicating it but Yeah, well it just shut

yeah, it just shut down so all right, thanks mate All

right cage you there mate yeah, there's not good news in the technical

front mate We can't get anyone out here for probably at least two weeks minimum.

So this is going to be down for at least a couple of weeks.

Look, mate, you can't dwell on it. That's the business we're in, okay?

So what I'm thinking, mate, we've got some stockpile here that we've been

pulling out, and it looks like it should have some good gold in it. I reckon

we've got at least four days of running. So I reckon we get that wash plant fired

up, eh?

All right. Pack everything up. You go get that plant fired up. All right. I'll

get the dirt up with a loader. Yep.

And we'll just keep bringing it to you.

We can't help the excavator going down, but what we can help is keep the gold

coming in.

I'm just going to keep bringing the stockpile dirt to the wash plant, which

is about a K away.

With the dump truck down, that's back at Caddo's, and we've only got the loader

here. It moves about five cubic metres at a time. The dump truck moves about 20

to 25.

So we're going to have to do at least four trips to one dump truck load.

That's all we've got to work with.

All right, beautiful.

All right.

Everything looks good.

Dad's coming, so get ready to get some dirt.

Looks like there should be some good pay dirt, eh?

Because of the size of this excavator, the size of the bucket, we've got to

maintain a really consistent loading pace.

Make sure the hopper's constantly fed with dirt, feeding the trommel.

Keep the good work up, Cage. You're doing a good job, mate. Keep it up,

buddy. All right.

I'll see you at the next load.

That's stopping.

Talk about timing.

That's not right.

This is ridiculous.

Ah, something wrong here. There's hardly any dirt coming off the conveyor, so it

looks like the hopper's chock-a-block.

What's going on here is that I've filled the hopper and it's just not going

through, so I'm going to have to get up in there and clear some of that out.

On the outskirts of Kalgoorlie, Simon needs to process 4,500 tonnes of pay

dirt this week to determine if results from their new Atlas lease will sustain

their $12,000 a day operation.

So what I've got to do is just push all this dirt down that's been stuck here

down into the feeder areas.

You can't be up here doing this every five minutes.

It's the slightest bit of moisture and it stuffs the whole thing.

Like this machine's capable of running about 30 tonne an hour. Running like

this, you'd be lucky to do two. There's a little bit more dirt coming off the

conveyor belt now. Pressure's starting to come out now.

So I'm just going to have a little test of this dirt here. Like everything looks

dry, there's dust lying around.

Like I get up here and dig into it a little bit. Like I'm only in just into

the dirt there, what?

Six inches.

And if I can squeeze that in my hand and it stays like a little turd, that is way

too wet. So that's just going to clog up in the hopper every time. So in reality,

I've got that much dry dirt.

We should have two dry blowers running and I'm barely getting enough dirt for

one. All the dirt is just way too wet. You know, there's been a little bit of

rain previous to when we come and checked out the lease to when we got

here now.

There's going to be a lot of clays in the soil will hold up that rain a lot

more. These piles of dirt, if they are wet in the middle, they'll stay wet for

a very, very long time. You know, being dry blowing, the ultimate word being

dry, it's got to be bone dry.

Oh, that dry blower's clogged again.

Pain in the arse.

I hope Cheryl's having a bit better luck. She's trying to find some moisture

and I'm trying to find no moisture.

Gold is the lifeblood of this operation, but water is a hugely essential

component. It's important we get water quickly because we probably go around

approximately 2,000 to 3,000 litres of water a week.

You know, you need water to be able to function and run a camp effectively.

So getting water is a vital part of the jigsaw.

This looks quite hopeful. There's a tank there.

I'm presuming there must be a water source here.

Yeah, you can hear a pump going on here. So he must have sunk a bore somewhere

and it's filling the tank.

A borehole is an outback well drilled through rock and soil to underground

cavities that fill up during heavy periods of rain.

That's water trickling in there, slowly filling the trough.

you can clearly see it's for the cattle and it's actively used i could probably

safely say it's a no-go all right let's go and figure out plan b then

down by where we're working there's sort of a man-made dam where they've dug out

old workings and the creek seems to run into there and it's been quite wet as of

late and it is quite muddy maybe this boat beggars can't be choosers

Clearly there's a lot of cattle uses this, but this doesn't belong to the

pastoralists. This is actually a massive hole. This is filled up with rainwater

and the creek naturally flows into here.

The cattle obviously use it, but they've got plenty of other sources around.

Wouldn't be my first choice, but it's the only choice we've got at the moment.

So I'm going to go and get the water truck and we'll pump some water in our

tanks and at least that'll keep us going for a little bit longer.

Looks like we found a water source.

Not ideal by any means, but if we can shower and wash our clothes tonight, and

then we can sluice our gold from here, I'll call that a success.

Woo!

Oh, we're driving down past a wet plank and right in front of me, literally

looking at a herd of buffalo.

That there would have to be 800 or 900 kilos of animal. You really don't want

to be on the receiving end of a set of horns like that. They are scary, scary

animals, especially when you're not in the safety of a truck. This place, it's

just crazy.

In the Northern Territory, Jackie and Kyle are racing to get through as much

pay dirt as possible for leaseholder Grant Farris and foreman Carl Skyring

before the looming wet season shuts them down.

So when the wet seasons come through in places like this, roads get flooded out.

People can't access anywhere.

Like this is all nice and dry now.

But if the wet season comes in, it could be at least six months until they can

get back up and running. So by us coming in here, then we're able to help get it

all done, get everything squared away for the wet season and just establish

like a good relationship with them, which will hopefully enable us to be

able to come back.

Holy dooly.

It really has been the trip of a lifetime.

It's all about the relationship building.

These guys have been so welcoming, you know? Like, they're happy with what

we're doing.

Who knows what the future's going to look like for us?

How's the gold going down there? What's it looking like? It's good, mate, yeah.

I've got to take my hat off to Jackie in the hot sun at the moment. Got another

target in here?

I've got a hut to be 40 degrees, and she just keeps digging. I don't know how.

I'm sitting in the air conditioner.

go jackie you can dig i've just picked up like eight down here in a row it's

insane dig dig dig dig because the clock is tick tick tick ticket there's

something coming from here something coming from here something coming from

here something coming from here now i can't even get them in my scoop because

they're everywhere if what i'm finding on this part is any indicator of what's

going to be in that wash plant i think we're all going to have our minds blown

and there it is

It's another little piece. Man, they are adding up so quickly.

Kyle, mate, this is absolutely loaded. You've got to get out of that box and

get down here in the sun and dig yourself up some shiny gold.

All righty. My turn to get onto the alloy.

Saddle up. This is going to get wild.

Oh,

I didn't have to go far.

Targets everywhere.

There we go.

I'm just standing in this hole now. It just keeps going.

There. it is 150 dollars worth of gold oh absolutely on a roll out here

have a look at that what a chunk look at that bloody thing would you

it'd have to be half an ounce in that thing mate you've just dug up like two

and a half thousand dollars worth of gold look at that golden eyes beautiful

well done

And, you know, what we're picking up in terms of nugs on the surface, they're

probably doubling that with foreign gold on the plant. It's just crazy.

It's unbelievable.

Well, I better hurry up and finish up what I'm doing down there. Get on to it.

Really quite sad that it's all coming to an end.

It's been one hell of a journey.

What an experience.

Seriously, look at this.

This is so different to my usual.

Time prospecting, it's been mind-blowing and I've loved every bit of it. It's not

easy to be far away from your family, your loved ones, but when I'm out here

doing this, it makes it so worth it. I never imagined coming to the Territory

would end up like this, but I'm so glad it has.

I really don't want to go.

I stopped.

That's not right.

Hey Dad?

Yeah mate?

The trommel's just stopped, yeah?

Alright mate, I'm coming back with another load, mate, okay?

I'll have a look at it. Right, see you in a sec.

So what's been happening, mate?

This just shut down, right?

I haven't been able to get it started again.

Mate, just shut it down.

So what I want to do here is just make sure all these are nice and firmly in.

Hang on. Look at that. That was just sitting in there.

I think you've found our problem.

I think with the vibration of running the plant, I reckon that's just come

loose. Grab the little socket set, mate. All right. Beautiful.

You know, look, we've just found a bit of an issue here.

We've got one of the ground wires going to one of the grounding points. When I

wriggled the wire, it literally just come out in my hand. So we'll hopefully

get this fixed up. I'm just trying to keep... Keep a calm head because if you

do your nana and your block, which can easily happen when you have these

frustrations, I can tell you that right now. Just trying to teach Caden

processes to try and, yeah, resolve these issues.

Thanks, mate.

That's it. Fit through there.

On behind there, Cade.

Yep. That should push in there nicely. So we're going to dab a Loctite on here.

Now, put this on carefully.

All right, those wires are in there nice and firm now, Caden, so they're making

good contact.

Fire her up, mate, and let's see.

All right, now we can get it started. It's going. All right, it's going, so

let's get going.

I'll keep them coming to your case.

Just keep throwing it in that wash plant, mate.

100% dad, I'm trying to keep it as fast as I can without going overboard.

Got to get through all this quickly before any unpredictable weather comes

and hits it.

A big reason why we need to get a million dollars this season is so we can

actually start getting some more plant equipment and have both operations

running simultaneously.

A bigger wash plant here at German Gully, another dump truck and maybe

another excavator. So we can really get some gold on board, you know. From what

I've seen so far with this feeder gully there is an abundance of fine gold. So

if we supersize this operation,

There's no reason why we shouldn't be consistently getting 50 to 100-ounce

weans. So if we get that, Neff Dream will be in full swing.

Hey, guys, that is it.

All right, good job, Caden.

So I reckon, mate, we get these mats cleaned out, get the concentrate panned

up. Beautiful.

All right, guys, get it smelted, and we'll get it on the scales and see what

we got, eh?

I can't wait to see what's in there, eh? All right, I'll go grab the buckets and

get ready.

Beautiful.

So, decided to get a water from this dam and we've sunk a pump just out there.

It's been a massive gamble coming to Kalgoorlie.

Spent a lot of money getting here.

It'd be nice to settle somewhere for a while.

So, I hope there is gold in the ground.

We'll just see how clear it looks going in.

Perfect. They don't take long to fill up with this pump. It's a pretty good pump.

Only ten minutes and we're done.

That's a dry blower unclogged again Whether there's golden or not we'll have

to wait and see probably got about 20 hours of dirt in this machine So shake

out the trays and see if we can see much How's it going Tommy?

Yeah alright

There's a little bit of gold there.

It's more sort of chunky gold and not as much fine gold. Looks good, the chunky

stuff, but just doesn't seem to end up adding up to the weight.

Quite dull, really, from this little small result.

We'll have to pan it off to really work out what's going on.

A little puddle of gold behind each one, but probably not quite enough for the

hours we've ran so far.

When you see a lot of nuggets, you think you're going to have a good result, but

it's not always the case because there's no fines to go with it.

Oh, here comes Cheryl now.

How are you getting on, Simon?

Yeah, all right. I've just cleaned this one out, so that's the last bit of dirt

from here.

What's your thoughts?

Average. Yeah, right. That's a bit of a shame, isn't it? Yeah.

That's the last bit of dry dirt?

That's pretty much the last bit of it.

Dry dirt from down here at the moment. Well, I'll fix the water up at camp.

Yeah. I just took from the little sort of dam, working dam down there.

Oh, yeah.

Look clean enough?

Average. But it will do for now.

Yeah. And I've got the sluice set up there so we can just recycle the water

back into it.

Yeah, good idea.

So I'll go and sluice the dirt.

Yep. And I'll call you with the update. No worries. You can pan it off.

Yep. All right, see you soon. All right, let me know how it looks. I'll come

panned off. All right, no worries. See you soon.

I didn't really want to tell Cheryl how bad it could be. The sort of moving

again makes me sick, but here we're burning diesel, paying wages, and if the

gold's not here, we're just going to have to pull the pin.

Oh, great. If you can get there then. You don't need me there?

Oh, beautiful.

OK.

No, that'll work all right, mate.

No, not a problem.

Well, thank you.

Cheers. Thank you, guys.

So?

What did he say?

He can be there on the 24th. That's about a couple of weeks from today.

But the good news is we don't have to be there. He said, no, I'll look after it,

mate. I'll sort it out for you.

Well, we'll be out with an excavator, German gullies for the next two weeks.

That's just the way it is, mate. It's just mine. We started the season off

pretty well.

Have these hiccups?

At least we beat the rain out there before we had to finish up. Well, we

just beat the rain, mate.

How's it going, mate? Oh, that's looking all right. Got a gold in there. We've

really got to try and at least get to that 200 ounces, million dollars this

year, mate, if we're going to really, you know, supersize German gully.

It's 1150 degrees there, mate.

Oh, look at that glowing.

Perfect.

Tell you what, there's actually a bit of gold there, mate.

There definitely is.

There we go.

Doesn't that look pretty in there? That looks very good.

Ooh, give that a feel.

Ooh.

That looks all right.

What are you waiting for?

Scale right there. All right.

Bar is 19.325.

Well, let's get these nuggets on.

brings it to 20.89.

Plus the nugget we got just before the excavator broke down comes to 22

.41.

We're not even halfway through the season.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

I tell you what, we've done all right. I'm actually shocked.

You said...

We can't get the excavator up and running for the next two weeks, so I

reckon that sounds like a little bit of a holiday to me.

So where do you reckon we should go?

I'm thinking a bit of sun.

I want to be able to get into some water.

Right. I reckon we go on a holiday, but maybe with a twist of adventure.

Maybe. All right, sounds good.

Well, that's been a week, hasn't it? But at least we all survived and there was

no major fatalities with the machinery.

Yeah, not too much carnage. Got good water in the end. And we all worked

really well together as a team to get here. Everyone sort of chipped in. It

was tough, but no one whinged about it. We all just got on with it.

How were the trays looking?

There were some times where we emptied out after 16 hours, looked like we'd

been running for six. And it was wet, most of it, so it wasn't feeding

anywhere near as much. So rather than doing 30 tonne to the hour, we would

have been lucky to be getting, you know, 20.

If that, will we see?

Let's see.

1.2,

4.2, 6.1.

All right, so that's... Down.

Well down. Way down.

We've said try and get two ounces a day.

We'll only be able to run one machine because everything down there is so wet

that you just can't run two machines. It's just not enough dirt.

You know, we haven't even got an ounce.

One ounce a day. So we're not making profit at all. So that means moving

probably. Yeah, we're going to have to move. We can't stay here on that.

It's just not economically viable.

So what does that mean for us?

Well, Mark's got other leases around.

Yeah, yeah. Whether they're going to have dry dirt and whether they're going

to have gold.

That's the two things we need.

We could be finding better gold elsewhere for our time. It's a

massive... upheaval to move again.

Disappointing, really, really disappointing, but it's just the way it

goes in gold. Come on.

Let's go into plan B.

Righto. Let's pack it up.

Here we go again.

Put it all back.

It's good fun, isn't it? Oh, it's great fun.

Packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking. Especially when you all just

got it out.

Yeah, the weigh-in was the final decision. It was nowhere near what we

need to have, which is really disappointing because we put...

a lot of hopes in here and spend a lot of money getting here but you can take

risks and some pay off and some don't.

We could have been here for three years we thought the amount of dirt we've

basically just finished unpacking everything you know you find a good

little camp spot get everything set up and then you have to move again so not

ideal at all.

Fortunately the guy that we're tributing this ground off has got more leases up

sort of three hours north of here so he's offered us to go up there.

So fingers crossed the next move will be better than this one.

Carl, I've got to say, honestly, you have taught me so much just about this

area and the ground and the geology here.

And it's been unreal.

I've never used any of that big machinery and I certainly wasn't going

to crash any of yours. But one thing I can do is get gold out of the ground. So

I'm just happy to have been able to help. Thank you so much for having us

here. This has been the trip of a lifetime. You know, it started off for

us as an exploration mission and it's developed right into full scale mining.

It has been incredible.

Any timey, welcome back.

I think the wet season's going to kick us out and then we'll be already

planning our trip back afterwards.

Look, I know that I've taken you away from the Palmer and your season's been

cut a little short.

Yeah. Working with you has been an absolute dream.

Thank you.

I'd like to extend the offer for you to come back to the Pilbara and see out

your season over there.

What race are you playing? You're Jackie, I'll play you more.

Working with you has been fantastic.

Working with both of you.

The whole squad, it's just been meant. I'm not ready to finish my season yet. I

want to keep going. Well, there's a whole lot of gold sitting on the table.

How about we weigh these bad boys up and see what we're dealing with? I seriously

thought you'd never ask.

Let's go.

Let's see how you do in there.

Five, six, seven, eight.

Going to break the scales the way we're going here.

Going, we're going.

15.95.

No! Way! Lovely.

Guys,

that's just under $80,000.

Well, that's the small stuff done.

Let's weigh these species up and see what we get on with these bad boys.

There's gold in there.

1522. I reckon that's probably going to be about 70% gold, right? So maybe take

30% away from that weight. That leaves us with about 10 ounces.

Yep, that'll do. Fair enough.

Well, you guys come in here and help us out. Oh, wow. I'm going to go. What's

that?

It's five, 10.5 ounces for you two, a

sign of appreciation for coming.

And Carl and myself, you square that one.

I didn't expect that at all. You already let us explore your leases and keep the

gold we found. And we just wanted to come back and do a solid for you guys.

We didn't do that for this.

I know, but this will get you back.

Well, we just smashed our season target.

10.5, which is already over our entire season target, brings us up to just

under 19.

Let's have a beer. That sounds like an awesome idea. I'm melting here, mate.

I'm leaking quicker than I can breathe in. Mate, you and me both. Let's do it.

All right, guys. Sounds good. We'll have a beer. Cheers.