This time on Aussie Gold Hunters...
It's no good. I really need you to turn up right now.
..Jacqui and Andrew lose their car keys four hours from help.
How do you know there isn't any crocs in here, though?
The duo are forced to hunt in an ancient waterhole...
Not a thing in there, mate.
..but determination... Oh, look at that!
..soon pays off... 300 bucks' worth of gold there.
That's a nice bit of gold. That's three from the one hole.
In Western Australia's arid goldfields,
Shane and Russell finally hit a rich patch of nuggets...
It was like picking popcorn off the cinema floor. It was everywhere.
..until Shane makes a rookie mistake.
You didn't put diesel in it, did you?
This could be the biggest day of our life, mate.
The Poseidon Crew's future all rests on a critical meeting
to secure a lease that could deliver the biggest nuggets they've ever found.
You guys can't come in here.
This is too big a deal for me today.
Adam? Adam, hey.
Um, yeah, it's Jacqui.
Yeah. We've got a bit of an issue out here, mate.
Sorry to have to give you a call.
We have lost our keys to our hire car.
Come on. I really need you to turn up right now.
This is no good.
Prospecting partners Jacqui Buzetti
and Andrew Leahy are stranded in the isolated
and dangerous tropical wilderness of the Palmer River region
in far North Queensland, Australia.
So we were driving through limestone country,
heading out to gold-bearing land
and we saw these amazing limestone casts.
I asked him if we could stop and have a look.
Jumped out of the car. For some reason, I chucked the keys in my pocket.
We climbed up over all this limestone.
When I got back to the car, no keys.
It was such a stupid thing.
There was no reason to even take the keys out of the car.
Working in such extreme and remote areas,
Andrew and Jacqui always leave their vehicle unlocked.
I'm just hoping that I can pick 'em up by retracing my steps,
but it's not looking good.
Their only chance is the lost keys might trigger his detector.
No car out this way is just so dangerous.
Whether it's a snake bite or fires or even a simple injury.
We need the vehicle to be able to get to help.
The closest support base is the Palmerville Cattle Station.
A four-hour walk over a rugged limestone range,
in 35 degree Celsius heat.
I wonder how Jacqui is going with that sat phone.
I hope she's having a win, cos I'm certainly not.
Yeah. So we just need to organise a way that we can pick up our keys.
They've got a spare key at the hire-car company.
The worst bit is we're not even really in gold country.
We were cutting through to it.
We're in limestone country, which, historically, isn't known for gold.
I've put us in a pretty bad position, really.
I'm almost back at the car.
That means I've basically retracked all of my steps now.
This isn't good. I don't think I'm gonna find them this way.
(GROANS)
So, if we can't get help,
it's gonna cost us both money and time,
which is just so bad for this trip.
We were relying on this to set up our season.
Andy!
How did you go? Yeah, I got in touch with the Station.
They said to speak to Matt, so I spoke to Matt.
He said that he can pop into the hire-car company and pick up a spare key for us.
And drop in and see us, so I sent him through where we are.
He said he's got a lot of work to do, so it could be a couple of days.
He's not sure.
We met Matt when we first got to Palmer.
He is one of the musterers here. He is a helicopter pilot.
There it is. Fish Creek.
According to the history books,
that was the one they got a heap of gold off.
As part of the deal, we have to report all our finds.
We're allowed to keep them. Sweet. But we have to tell them where we got it all from.
They have three weeks' exclusive access
to gold country that has produced a million ounces since the 1870s,
but has been detected for 40 years.
(LAUGHS) Yes!
Whoo!
And it paid off in the first week,
with nearly one and a half ounces to launch their season.
Stoked! Yeah. This is why we do it. 'Ey?
We just don't really have time for this.
I know, we don't.
We've sunk so much money into preparing for this trip,
that, if we don't find gold, we're gonna be really in the red.
So...I was having a bit of a think while you were gone.
There's a big creek that runs right in through this limestone country.
Remember, the boys at the Station were telling us about the big waterholes in it.
So, perhaps that's worth a detector, a bit of investigation.
We do have the underwater detector.
It's all we've got at the moment. It's the only shot we've got.
I did a bit of reading that, within the limestone belts,
they were finding a lot of copper,
traces of silver and gold.
It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that there could be gold here.
It's a lot better than sitting around waiting and doing nothing.
If there's any chance that there could be gold out here, we'd have a shot at finding it.
Check that out. Whoa!
That's some of the clearest water I've ever seen.
Oh, my God. I did not expect to see this here.
Gold being so heavy,
it will always try and get to the deepest section it can get.
If there's any gold to be found, it will be found in those waterholes.
You heard anything off Catto yet? No, mate, I haven't heard anything.
I would have liked to have heard something by now.
Yeah. Tell me about it.
2,300 kilometres south...
in the state of Victoria
are the Poseidon Crew, Brent Shannon and Ethan West.
Five days ago, they made an offer to lease the legendary gold ground known as "Catto's Paddock",
but are still waiting for an answer from owner Matt Catto.
Every day that goes past not hearing from the Cattos is another day closer to maybe
not getting the OK to go on it.
They are so elusive, big nuggets,
and to get onto a place that could yield us
many large gold nuggets...
My Holy Grail is to find an 1,000-ounces-plus nugget.
In 1871, the 50,000 square-metre Catto's Paddock
produced two of the biggest nuggets found in Australia.
The Kum Tow and The Precious.
A combined value of $6 million today.
If we happen to sell the Big Licence, we might be able to get
the finances behind us to just buy this ground, make them an offer they can't refuse.
Last week, Brent made the massive decision to sell his untapped Big Licence lease
and $1 million wash plant.
I could be walking away from millions and millions of dollars
buried in the ground.
I'll follow you through hell and high water, mate,
but I don't wanna chase just big nuggets, I wanna make an income.
But Brent and Ethan's future is now a huge gamble on the unknown potential of Catto's Paddock.
You think you're onto a winner. Then it turns one way and it becomes a loser, just like that.
Well, Eth, we're back out here at Slip Up, mate.
It's been a big couple of weeks. The toughest weeks of my life.
We might be able to dig here for the next week or so, mate. We might find a whopper.
The team have just one week to dig their only remaining lease, Slip Up.
A small, four-hectare patch, not far from the Big Licence.
What are we doing after that week?
Let's just worry about digging this.
Let's figure that out over the next week or so. I don't know yet.
I've got some ideas, but I don't know.
I can see it's playing on Ethan's mind now.
He's got a family, a young family.
I've got to find something that's gonna give him enough income
to keep him with me, I want him to stay with me, I want him to stay mining,
but if we're not finding gold, we're not finding enough gold,
he's gonna have to find something else to do.
Right now, we've got nothing really else to go onto after Slip Up.
He says just trust him and leave it to him.
The problem is I'm on a percentage.
And, uh, when you're on a percentage,
when you're not earning, that little bit of gold coming through,
you're not making money.
He's now starting to think about his future, beyond Slip Up
and beyond Catto's, if we don't get it.
So I've got to find something, you know, to tide us over.
Yeah, you're all right to go.
No worries. You never know, Ethan.
We might land a good nugget or two by the end of this week.
Can only dream of it, mate.
In the first two weeks of the Poseidon Crew's season,
the Big Licence produced nearly $200,000 of fine gold
before it was sold,
but now they're relying on Slip Up for big nuggets.
We've proven there's good gold here.
We found 123 ounces in nuggets in one day here.
Essentially, what we're digging over here at Slip Up is an ancient buried river course.
We dig down towards the bedrock.
The bedrock is the harder material sitting under all the gravel.
We pull out the gravel, throw it on the back of the dump truck and that's our paydirt.
We take it up to the pad and tip it out, push it out,
about, you know, four to six inches deep.
Then we detect it and, hopefully, land some good nuggets.
Yeah, this ground, in places, is full of props.
There's bits of timber that the old boys have put into the ground to help support the roof.
The Slip Up lease was originally worked by prospectors 125 years ago,
who built tunnels
at the bedrock level
to dig out gold-rich paydirt.
No coincidence that we just got a 33-ounce at the end of last season
right in that vicinity, so that's probably a good reason why it's full of props, there was good gold there.
So I'm hoping Slip Up yields us something at the end of this week,
to make sure that, you know, we don't spend all that money
that we got from the Big Licence in one hit.
With everything being so much up in the air right now,
it's basically put your lifestyle on hold.
A roller coaster of a season!
Already. We're three weeks in
and nowhere to dig.
It's madness, it really is.
2 00:11:03.160 -- 00:11:06.160 align:middle line:65% position:50% How close do you reckon the closest town is?
I don't really know, Russell. I don't even want to think about that.
We'll just have to be careful and do what we can do.
We've got each other! That's enthralling for me.
In the remote wildness of Western Australia,
former plumbers Shane Calegari and Russell Nash
are in the second week of a gruelling 3,000-kilometre long
gold-hunting expedition.
I reckon north-east we'll go.
OK. Your call on the shots. I'll follow you.
They're travelling through some of the most secluded outback goldfields,
many far from civilisation.
I've got a goal in life to find an ounce nugget.
I'm not gonna find that at home, so we've got to travel.
We need to go where people haven't been before, that's the main game and find some big gold.
Got more expenses. Gonna lose a lot more time travelling. More fuel.
I've got a lot of bills to pay.
Kids. A mortgage. I've got to find some gold to pay for it.
Yee-ha!
Last week, Shane and Russell went off-road
in search of big-nugget ground, to dig and to detect,
but at their first weigh-in of the season,
they only produced small nuggets and fine gold worth $800.
I'm sick of it. I want big gold.
It's where he said, a ridge up the back there.
This will be it. Let's just stop and have a look.
I'm pulling up behind you.
We've come across these maps from an old friend of ours. He's retired now.
He gave me the maps and said to go for it, showed me where he found some gold.
He's still got some leases up here, working leases, so we can dig for gold.
He's found it with old technology. We've got the best you can get. If he's found gold, we can find gold.
It's probably 2km, 3km away.
We'll drill some holes and see how we go. Let's do it.
Let's fire it up, Russell!
It's just an auger, a petrol-powered auger. That's gonna drill down.
That's gonna give us a sample from the base.
Normally, gold and the finer gold will get into the lower sections.
That's what we want to try and find out.
All right. We'll see how we go.
This is the dirt that we've just used the auger to drill up.
So, we're just gonna take it down now, use the pay pipe,
tip it through the funnel and see how we go.
Recent rain has pooled on top of an impenetrable layer
of compacted fine clay,
called "a claypan",
that now provides water for the duo's pay pipe.
Fill it right up with water.
We can start putting some paydirt in there.
It's just a lump of pipe.
It's got a funnel inside. There's a screen on top of the funnel.
We fill it full of water. Then we start putting dirt in there.
The bigger rocks get held at the top.
The smaller stuff flows down and drops into the bottom pot.
It bubbles up over the top, like a cauldron.
As it's bubbling up, all the light material is coming out.
All the heavy stuff, the gold, is at the bottom. That gives us an indication of what's in the area.
You only need one speck, two specks out of it.
There's not much material.
There's a very little amount of material.
We'll be able to concentrate there and use the dry-blower later on.
OK. All right, Rusty. Let's have a look.
See how we go. Show me a little piece, that's all I want.
That's it! That's gold!
That's what we want. A bit of that.
Is there another piece there? Or just the one? A little one.
Is that good enough? Good enough. Paydirt.
That's gold, brother! Is that enough?
Only one way to find out. Let's do it.
We've just taken the top off.
100mm, 150mm off the top. More or less brand-new ground again.
The detector first and, hopefully, pick out the big pieces.
(DETECTOR WHOOPS) I've got something very fine here.
Shane, you got a noise? Well, it's a noise...
Give me a listen.
(WHOOPING) There, Russell.
That's it. That's a small bit of a gold, for sure. The scoop.
(DETECTOR SILENT) No.
Put it - It's in my hand. OK.
Watch this. (BLOWS)
That's what you call a dry-blower!
Look at that. It's a baby one.
Not too bad. But it's gold.
We're onto it. The dry-blower is gonna pick that up easy.
(MOTOR STARTS) Let's make some dust.
The dry-blower separates small nuggets and fine gold
from the scraped paydirt.
The smaller material passes into the riffle mats,
where compressed air is blown from underneath,
shaking the trays and blowing
the lighter dirt out, leaving gold
trapped in the riffle mats,
ready to be panned.
We're just cleaning out the mats. Shane has got that there now.
He's gonna pan that off to see if we keep going or go somewhere else.
OK. I'll get closer.
Russell? Yes?
Come over here. Worth running for?
I've got gold. I don't know whether it's substantial enough, but it's gold.
Payable or not? Not big enough or really what we want.
We can't be wasting the day, Shane. Let's make a decision.
Gonna go? We'll get going. OK. We'll find some bigger gold.
I was disappointed that we got very, very fine gold.
To get the amount of gold we need with that fine a gold, we'd be here forever.
Just more downtime we don't need.
Every hour we lose is another hour of good gold we could have had.
It like this little tropical oasis in the middle of nowhere.
We're not on gold ground. We're in limestone country.
This massive mistake by me cost us, it's put us under a lot of pressure.
Hours earlier, Andrew lost their car keys,
stranding them far from the Palmer River goldfields.
The huge mistake has put Jacqui's costly venture to far North Queensland in jeopardy.
Every day out here counts.
We've got a real limited window of time here
and time is running out.
I'll take the detector just up here, where it's shallow, get it going, see how that works.
When you go looking for gold in new country like this,
that we haven't really researched, we're gonna start in the creeks.
The way gold works is gravity, obviously.
It does collect in those deep gullies and waterways.
How do you know there isn't any crocs in here, though?
I don't know. There's one way to find out.
The rule about swimming up here, in Palmer, is if the water is murky
and you can't see the bottom, steer clear.
Time to find out what it's like, hey?
(WHOOPS) (LAUGHS)
How is it? Bloody beautiful!
For thousands of years, waterholes like this
have offered relief to people living in the tropical heat
of remote Northern Queensland.
So I'll be chasing in and around all these rocks,
where the gravels are caught up on these big boulders here.
I'm just hoping there's gonna be a bit of gold caught as well.
This is what we use. When you see something underwater,
you squeeze the water out.
As it sucks back in again, to fill the bottle up,
it will suck up anything in front of it, as well.
So, hopefully, we can put some gold in front of it.
Oh, here we go. She's in the water!
I brought this along just as a back-up detector,
in case any of ours break or malfunction while we're out there.
It just has the added benefit of being able to go underwater.
So, the plan here now is to detect through these creek gravels here.
This is the lowest area, where, if there is any gold around here, it would have got caught.
Hey, Andy. How are you going?
Nah, not a thing. Me neither.
I'll suck up the gravel out of this deep hole down there and pan it off.
It's about all I can think of.
Well, let's pan it off and see how we went. 'Ey? Yeah.
The geology of the rocks in the pan doesn't look great.
Not any quartz or anything.
It's just...sort of shale.
Light, loose sandy stuff.
Yeah. Not a thing in there, mate.
If there's nothing in there, I don't think we're gonna pick gold up, anyway.
No point even detecting.
Not really.
Today was a bit of a bust.
We tried, but it just isn't here.
Not much we can do about that.
We need a new plan now. Yeah. This one is not gonna add anything to our tally, that's for sure.
Every day we don't find gold while we're here is a wasted day.
It actually puts us behind, because it costs us money
and we're not making money.
It's a really bad situation.
(DETECTOR WHOOPS)
There it is. Actually, a bit of gold.
Our first bit of gold!
That's probably round about a seven-grammer.
It's not really what we're after.
We need something about 400 times bigger than that.
The Poseidon Crew have just days left before they finish digging the Slip Up lease.
They're still waiting to hear if the Catto family will grant them
permission to hunt big nuggets on their land.
This deal right now is absolutely crucial to our futures.
It's not just a matter of what we're doing for the rest of this season.
It's years of work ahead. If we can't buckle this down now,
this whole season is gonna be a complete right-off.
Brent has gambled everything on the duo's future.
If the Catto family refuse his offer,
the team will have no ground licence to dig for the rest of the season.
I haven't let onto Ethan yet,
but, you know, every minute and day that ticks by without hearing
makes me a little nervous that, maybe, they're just gonna say no.
The Catto family ain't no strangers to gold.
You know? They've been in that area for...
over 150-odd years.
They know what could be beneath that ground.
That's why I know it ain't gonna be cheap for me to get into that ground.
(DETECTOR WHOOPING)
(WHOOPS)
Got a decent target now. Probably about two and a half feet up.
Hey, Brent. You copy, mate?
Yeah, bud?
I just picked up a little bit. It's a proper boomer.
Boomer? How far off the ground? About two foot.
I'm just trying not to get excited.
All right, mate. It's right in the area where we got the one last season.
Yeah, right. Whoo-hoo!
"A boomer" is a big target that still signals when the detector
is held up to a metre above the ground.
Well, mate, it could be another bit, buddy. I know.
Hey? I know.
Have another listen, mate.
(WHOOPS)
Where is it?
How does it feel?
This could be something, mate!
Where is it?
(CONTINUES WHOOPING)
Aaargh! You're kidding!
One of those gads.
Had me going.
Ah, well.
Could have been another big chunk of gold, mate.
What they use these for is when they get in the hard stuff,
they use it like a chisel. They call them "gads".
The gad is an iron tool,
used by the miners of old
to chisel into hard bedrock and break it open.
I told myself, "Don't get too excited."
But every time it gets me, especially in this ground.
That could have been... a chunk, mate.
We haven't heard from the Cattos yet. I was hoping it was gonna tide us over for a bit longer.
Unbelievable.
2 00:22:51.240 -- 00:22:54.880 align:middle line:90% position:50% We've just shifted to a new spot. We'll do a check we've got gold.
If there's no gold, we'll move again.
We've got to find the gold. The big stuff, too.
The small stuff is great, but it doesn't pay bills.
Shane and Russell's road trip into Western Australia's Murchison region
has produced only $800 in gold so far,
barely enough to cover their weekly fuel and food costs.
I'm not gonna say to the wife, "I just walked around the bush for two months
and found nothing, I didn't make a cent."
Rusty!
What have you got?
I don't know. I can't see.
Put it in my hand.
I can't see.
I don't know whether it's...
That... Metal or gold?
It's a tiny bit of gold. Look at it. That's one!
Find another one. A bigger one, though!
Yeah. That'd be... (BLEEP)
My detector, though, to use is more expensive.
It's a bit better than Shane's. It goes a bit deeper and a lot larger area.
I'll just run across it with this, hopefully, get some nice big nuggets out of this.
We'll put the rest through the dry-blower.
(WHOOPING)
That is gold, for sure. We've just scraped the top off.
So it can't be anything else.
(WHOOPING)
Here somewhere.
It's in my hand.
Ah, a beautiful piece of gold!
Ha ha! If we get a heap of pieces like that, we're on the money.
That's the best thing. We're making money.
Shane! Have a look at this.
I can see it!
Believe it or not, I got my own action happening over there!
There's gold everywhere! I had a signal here and another one here.
Look. Yeah.
It's like a tooth. Look!
Look at that.
I'm not joking. A big, jagged one.
Get out the way. I got another one here, as well.
This is a good patch. Oh, give us a break!
Get up. Otherwise, I'll be digging a big hole. For you!
Make sure it's deep.
(LAUGHTER)
Keep going.
I'm still a dad. A couple of kids. Mortgages.
My life is expensive.
I can't come up here for nothing. Not for the play money. For the good money.
Shane and Russell also need to cover extra fuel and food costs,
during their trip into the remote goldfields,
so it's critical they can cash in on any promising gold ground.
That's a nice bit of gold.
Look how sharp that is. A nice piece of gold.
That's three from the one hole.
It's a honey hole. We're right where we want to be. We've found a great little patch.
Like picking popcorn off the cinema floor. It was everywhere.
We might get an ounce today. Not what I want, but it's gold.
An ounce of gold this week
will get the duo back on track towards their 20-ounce season target.
Shane!
Yeah? What did you put in this, this morning?
Unleaded. Well, look at it!
Well...
You didn't put diesel in it, did you?
Well, there's every chance I did, but I thought it was unleaded.
That's diesel, Shane.
How much did you put in? I filled it up.
We've just found some gold, we're on a great patch
and we've just made a stupid mistake.
Unbelievable.
We've got the gators, the snake-bite kit, the first aid kit, sat phones.
We've tried the limestone country and it was a failure.
So now we're gonna have to hoof it all the way into the gold country,
which is gonna be a fair hike, but we can't just sit around and twiddle our thumbs,
waiting for Matt, we've got to get back on the job and do what we've got to do to find some gold.
But it will be another day
before Matt flies in with the spare car keys.
So Jacqui and Andrew plan to hike five kilometres east,
in 36 degree tropical heat,
through rugged terrain
to the closest gold country.
The Hodgkinson Formation is a bunch of a sedimentary beds.
That's the gold zone. That's where we need to be.
It formed hundreds of millions of years ago,
when seismic activity pushed gold,
along with quartz from the earth's core to the surface.
Mate, this is gonna be a big mission. Hey? Yeah, it is.
It could take us a couple of hours to actually get there, before we can start detecting.
If there was ever a time to be really well prepared, it's for stuff like this.
So this is taipan country.
The deadliest snake in the world.
Snake gaiters have thick padding that protects the lower leg.
The most common place a venomous snake will strike.
You just can't take any chances. Just got to make sure that we're as safe as possible.
If you get done by a taipan, it's all over.
You've got, like, 20 minutes to get to a hospital.
All right. Let's do this. All right.
Here we go.
It's got a really high humidity up here.
It's pretty bloody hot.
It's pretty snakey, too.
God, it's thick out here.
Even though it is dangerous out here,
it's a risk we have to take.
We're not left with any choices.
We have to get on the gold. We're running out of time.
It's hot! I'm feeling it already.
If we're gonna recoup any of our costs for this trip, we have to do this.
We're coming up to the end of Slip Up now.
And we still don't know whether we've got Catto's Paddock yet.
Where do we go next, if this all falls through and fails?
To say that I'm not nervous about it would be a complete and utter lie.
The Poseidon Crew are spreading out and detecting dirt
from the final section of the Slip Up lease,
while the future of their entire operation hangs in the balance.
(PHONE RINGS)
Hello.
How are you going there, Matt?
Yeah. Right.
Yeah, I can meet you there. No problems at all.
Yeah. The Paddock. No problems.
All right, mate. Cheers, mate. Bye. Bye.
(SWITCHES OFF ENGINE) Hey, Eth! Eth!
What's up? That was Matt Catto.
Reckons we can meet in the Paddock.
Oh. Meet us now? Yeah.
He wants to meet us over there, so we'll get going.
Get... All right. We'll go now. All right.
It'll be good news. Yeah. Good.
I've just had a call from Matt Catto. He's just asked if we can meet over in the Paddock.
I, um, said I can get over there straight away.
Which is a good sign that, maybe, they might let us on there.
This would be massive.
If we can get this ground...
Nobody has been able to mine this ground
since the old boys moved on.
I can tell you something right now.
The old boys didn't get everything.
I'm starting to get a bit nervous now, mate.
Oh, mate, you're nervous?
My future depends on this, too.
This meeting could decide if the Poseidon Crew get to dig
for potential riches
or end up with nowhere to mine.
My gut is churning, thinking about it, mate. I'm worried, mate.
I am... I am actually worried.
Looks like he's here. He is here, is he?
You want me to stay in here? What am I doing?
Might be better for you to stay here, Eth. Too many people,
he might feel uncomfortable.
Mate, I'm gonna jump out, buddy. I need some air, so...
All right.
Eth, this could be the biggest day of our life.
You guys can't come in here.
This is too big a deal for me today.
Actually...
Grab this.
Grab this, mate. Oh, really?
Yeah. You can't come in, mate.
If you guys spook him, this is too big a deal for us.
OK. You... OK.
If the offer is rejected by the Catto family,
Brent's dream of hunting monster nuggets
and Ethan's future with the Poseidon Crew could be over.
The Slip Up is done and dusted.
So where we go from here, if we don't get this, I don't know.
It would be nice to be over there, but...
Look, I'll let him work his magic.
It's no good feeling this.
Anxiety levels going through the roof right now.
Come on. It's too hot for this.
It really is humid today.
Probably the hottest day...
(WHOOPS) There we go.
That's part of an old saddle or something, I'd say.
It's 100% harder work.
If we don't get a bit of gold, it's really gonna affect us, I think.
Hard work we're not even earning a... (BLEEP) ..percent for.
Jacqui and Andrew have been trekking for several hours,
in search of gold-rich ground,
but still have nothing to add to their 1.3 ounce season tally.
I'm getting a real faint signal.
A lot of bad stuff has gone on, so we could do with some good luck right now.
(WHOOPS)
Look at that!
Yes!
Oh, that's such a relief to finally see some bloody colour in my hand.
We really needed this right now.
I'd say we've probably got half a gram of gold there, maybe 50 bucks.
The amount of hard work we do, sometimes, to find gold,
it means so much more than that.
No choice now, but to keep going, get this gold out, then do that march home.
They need to allow two hours for the trek back to the camp before it gets dark.
(WHOOPS) That's the noise we want to hear.
A bit stressed at the moment. Just trying to play catch-ups now.
(WHOOPS)
All right.
Oh, look at that!
That's a nice chunk, too.
Whoo! All right. That's a good one.
The first one was a relief.
But that one is happiness. That's what we do it for.
That could be 250, 300 bucks' worth of gold there.
Yeah, we don't have much time left in Palmerville.
With the way this last week has gone,
we are definitely running out of time.
(WHOOPS) Still in the scoop.
Ah!
Hey, Andy! I'm on the board.
Nice one, mate.
Got myself a nice little piece of gold, so...
Looks like just under a gram or so.
Finally, I've found what I was looking for.
I feel like I've been searching all week.
The nugget adds nearly $80 to their tally.
We'd better hit the road, hey. Yeah.
But they've made little headway towards their 15-ounce season target.
There's no indicators nearby of workings or anything,
so it's definitely one to pinpoint and put in our report.
Yeah, just dropping that pin now.
What did you write on it? Snake Gully? Yeah. A pin for Snake Gully.
Happy days. Yeah. Nice work, mate.
This is the type of information they wanted when they asked us to do the report for them.
It's always a job to get gold, but once you've got it in your pocket,
it feels a lot more worthwhile.
2 00:34:46.320 -- 00:34:50.040 align:middle line:90% position:50% Shane filled the powerplant up this morning. He's put diesel in it.
Now it won't start and it's smoking.
I'll have a look. As long as we can fix it, I don't care, but we're on the gold.
In the remote Murchison area of Western Australia,
Shane and Russell have struck a rich patch of gold,
but their dry-blower engine has stopped,
after Shane filled it with diesel fuel instead of petrol.
It's easy to do. It's easy to make a mistake, but we can't afford to make a mistake.
It's now costing us money.
I can just dump all the fuel out of the tank, dump the carby,
refill it again and we should be all right to go.
It's just downtime. It's just silly downtime.
You got a syphon hose?
Yeah. I can do that.
We had to get the diesel out of the system, syphon it out of the tank.
There's gold there. Imagine what is in the pans already.
Gonna have to drop the carby
and also the fuel filter, I'll have to drop that out as well and drain the whole fuel line.
Right, give me the container.
Ah, I hope we're gonna get out of this, Shane.
Can you get some proper stuff now? Some petrol, please?
Because diesel is thicker than petrol, it's blocked the fuel filter,
stopping the fuel pump from moving the mixture through the system.
Yeah, well, the pressure is on now.
Just filled it up full of petrol.
The right stuff.
If it doesn't go now, we're in trouble. See how we go. All right?
Cut!
I've probably given it a good clean-out, Russell.
(ENGINE RUNS SMOOTHLY)
You are one of the luckiest men I know.
Ah, yeah. Well, that's all right. I can live with that.
Do that again, I might have to sack you! (LAUGHS)
Russell!
I have been sacked by... (BLEEP) ..experts. You don't rate!
Hey, we got away with it again. We're back on board.
The ship ain't sunk yet, Shane!
Shane and Russell can finally process the scraped paydirt
at a rate of three tonnes per hour.
It was nice and dry. It worked out great. I think we made some money.
The duo are hoping for substantial fine gold from the paydirt,
that will help them reach a one-ounce tally for the week.
(WHOOPS)
Doesn't sound too bad. That's what we want. That's what we want.
That's what we want. That's more gold.
Money in the pocket at the end of the day.
It's just got to be strong.
I wouldn't be game to tell Russell, if it's not strong.
(WHOOPS) Still there. That means it's getting bigger!
Russell! Forget about that! Come over and have a look at this.
I'm digging for gold!
Just come here! Do what you're told.
We might get an ounce today.
Ha ha ha! Payday!
Look. Just play around with that.
Ah, you little beauty! Look at that. That's...
That's money-making, that is.
Yeah, that's good dirt.
(WHOOPS) It's screaming now.
With targets still being found, they both get back on the detectors.
OK. It's in my hand.
There it is! There it is. You little beauty. It's gonna be a grammer.
That's not bad. That's good money just there.
Russell! You got a bit for the jar?
It's a big piece for the jar.
Better than a gram. You little beauty!
It's every part of a gram. That's a good piece of gold.
Pretty enjoyable to hit target after target. It's only a three-metre square area
and we've found these nuggets, one after another.
I'm gonna need a bigger jar, that's what's gonna happen!
I can't say I've ever spewed up from nerves before.
This is just a gut-wrenching feeling now.
We have to secure this deal down or we've got nothing.
The Poseidon Crew's mine boss Brent Shannon is at a critical meeting
to secure a deal to dig the legendary Catto's Paddock.
No deal and their season is over.
He is coming back.
He's given him something. He's got paperwork of some type.
I don't know whether that's good or bad or what it is.
What's going on?
What happened? Get in the car.
What?
You know why I'm smiling, don't you?
What happened?
We just got Catto's Paddock!
Ha ha ha! We've just got the approval, mate. We've got to put the application in,
but the land owners have agreed that we can dig this Paddock.
So I've got a job! Mate, you've got a job.
What did I tell you? Stick with me and we'll get it. And we got it.
Let's go.
Mate, we have sold one dream
and we have landed the other one.
Mate, you've got no idea...
Mate, I chucked.
You chucked? Mate, I chucked. I chucked.
Best-case scenario?
We can get over there and start digging towards the end of this season
and land a monster nugget, that is the dream.
This is the last pass, Ethan.
The last pass of Slip Up.
That's done.
Slip Up is done, mate. That is done and dusted.
Well done, buddy. Let's go and weigh in.
I'm just gonna put it all on there, mate.
(CHUCKLES) That comes to...
0.35 of an ounce.
Yeah.
The final week of working Slip Up added a meagre $875 to their tally,
but the Poseidon Crew's goal now
is to get mining on Catto's Paddock.
I'm telling you, we're in for a massive chance up there, Ethan.
Catto's Paddock is like the Holy Grail.
I am gonna move heaven and earth
to get this permit through as soon as possible, because I want to get on there this season.
That's the next battle.
A mining permit to dig on Catto's needs to be submitted to the Victoria Government,
but it could take months to be approved.
We've got no more ground to mine. I haven't really got a Plan B.
I didn't anticipate we'd sell the Big Licence. That wasn't on the radar.
All right. All right, mate.
Slip Up is over. Go. I'm done. Done.
At the end of the day, we're miners and we want to find ground to mine.
I'm gonna have to work on something and work on something fast.
Happy with the week? I reckon it went pretty well.
I don't know. Weigh the gold and we'll soon find out!
How is the patch we found, hey? What a beauty that was.
In the Murchison goldfields of Western Australia,
Shane and Russell detected a lot of small nuggets,
but they hope the fine gold from the dry-blower
will help them get their season on track.
Tell me what it is, Russell.
32.60. Just over an ounce.
2,700 bucks. $2,700. Today's money, hey.
1.04 ounces to their tally is a welcome boost
to cover the costs of their huge expedition north.
The gold we found was very good, but it's really not what we're after.
We're after large, chunkier gold.
It's not the game plan. It's still a good week. We can't complain.
North? North!
Big gold!
Hey, Matt, is that you coming in?
Yeah, mate. I've got good news for you.
Whoo! Got the key.
After being stranded for days in rugged far North Queensland...
I'll go and grab it. Grab the key.
..Jacqui and Andrew finally have a new set of keys for their vehicle.
Thanks, big fella.
See you later, mate.
Whoo! Thank you!
All right. The moment of truth.
Considering what we went through this week,
we're lucky to have any gold.
The pair struggled being so far from viable gold country, but their trek
to the Hodgkinson belt brought some success.
Let's just find out how we went. This week really hasn't gone to plan.
How did we do? 0.2 of an ounce.
About 500 bucks.
After two weeks, Jacqui and Andrew's tally is one and a half ounces,
putting their costly trip to the Palmer River in the red.
It's just not enough. That barely even covers the costs, it really doesn't.
Just gonna have to crank it now. We've only got a week or so left here in Palmerville.
Yeah. The pressure is just big, hey.
Let's get out of this limestone country and back into that gold ground.
This ordeal has been a major set-back for us.
It's definitely partly your fault!
But how can you just drive past that without having a look?
I can see the limestone. I didn't have to climb all over it and lose the key.
And you say you like geology!
subtitles by Deluxe