Original subtitles

(Transcrito por TurboScribe.ai. Atualize para Ilimitado para remover esta mensagem.) There's a secret war going on in the outback town of Claremont.

The gold here is so good and the value of gold now is so high.

Look at that.

Dog eat dog, the wars are on.

You've ripped me off since day one.

It's meant to be a partnership.

You are bleak.

Righto, well good on you, good on you.

Have a good time.

Three mining teams.

We have put a load of money into the mine, so we have to make it work.

On the one patch of land.

This is just some of the stuff Donny's been walking over.

Guys, be lucky if I don't walk over his big nose.

Fighting it out to see who can uncover the biggest nuggets.

Can you get down here please?

And the most gold.

Awesome, that's a work of art.

There's a lot of it to be found here.

Hands shaking.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high grade gold reserves.

The price of gold is just making them do really silly things.

Hang on.

The teams have ten weeks to hit their season targets.

What am I doing?

Aussies risking it all to strike a grip.

Get your f*** off.

I might have a whack at that one.

You never know.

Just a bit of shit off me bucket.

Story of my life.

Donny's on the hunt for gold on a 320 acre mining lease called 1870.

He's halfway through the season.

1870 is right next door to the Scratchy Moo mining lease.

Owned by business partners Matt and Damar.

And to the north is a third mining operation called Swiss Diggings.

Run by Dennis, a tough as nails solo operator.

The area is a 30 kilometre triangle shaped piece of land.

Soaked in business failures and bad blood.

There's no love lost in the gold fields of Claremont.

All I can do is keep digging.

In the last 12 months I've gone from owning 1870 to contracting on 1870.

Got all these corporates running the show now.

These are the mine's new owners.

Cashed up Gold Coast couple Richie and Kimberley.

And they want results.

So I'm under pressure.

You have to produce.

If you don't produce you're not contracting anymore.

Donny operates under a 60-40 joint venture.

He gets to keep 60% of everything he finds.

The balance goes to the new owners.

But the deal relies on trust.

You've only got to find an ounce nugget and you're in the money.

Like gold's at just over $5,000 an ounce at the moment.

But when you're not finding it at all it makes things very tough I can tell you.

I did have a good run for a few months in a row and it was really good.

But lately it's been starting to get a bit thin.

All I've got in my bottle for the last couple of days is probably about

you're lucky to be three grams which doesn't even help really pay for fuel.

Donny's using his 20-ton excavator to scrape off a 20-centimetre layer of dirt.

We'll see how this goes.

He'll then run his detector over the loose dirt and hope he strikes gold.

It's fairly quick going through the shallow ground

but it can be quite rewarding too if you can get onto a little patch.

Sometimes you can be doing this and within an hour

you could have $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 sitting in your bottle.

Just hasn't happened to me lately.

The radio frequency from the search coil on the detector

is what locates the targets.

But it can be very hit and miss.

The scrape and detect method is repeated until Donny hits bedrock.

That's just the way gold is.

It can be there one minute and then go on the next.

The 1870 team are a long way off their season target of $500,000.

Richie and Kimberley are chasing 100 ounces.

That's just over 3,000 grams of gold.

Come on, baby.

And in the past three days, all Donny has managed to find

is three grams of gold worth $500.

The clock is ticking.

Hopefully there'll be a bit of gold stuck in between the bedrock cracks

but at the moment I'm not doing too well.

If you're not on the gold, you can die in this game.

You could end up on your arse.

Go on, have a look.

This is Lee, Donny's ex-1870 business partner.

Walking away from 1870 was hard

but it was the right financial decision to make.

Lee and Donny had a bitter fallout.

People don't think they get enough money.

People think someone's ripped them off.

On it goes. I'm over it.

They're now sworn enemies.

The guy's a grub. He's like a spider.

Just brings you into his web. He's as shonky as they come.

Lee's back in Claremore, searching for new gold ground.

A chance to start again.

He's arranged to meet Matt and Damo,

owners of the Scratchy Moo Mining List.

Fancy seeing you two here.

Hi, Leroy. How are you, mate?

Come up here to see Matt and Damo.

They've got land up here that's pegable.

That's the main reason to come up here,

is to see what the deal is, have a look at the ground

and then try and make some decisions

whether we go ahead and try and purchase a parcel off them.

Well, we'll see how this goes.

Donny's praying his new cut will turn up some much-needed nuggets.

Metal. I thought that was promising.

He's under pressure to deliver

to the mine's new owners and their on-site manager, Dan.

Starting to get a little bit more of a corporate feel to it this show.

There's gear starting to turn up here,

so I'm expecting that the mining operation's

going to go from manhandle to machine handle.

I'm down here digging gold while they're up there

fixing up all their machinery and stuff

to get ready for this type of process.

And they're relying on the contractors

to bring in the gold to keep them afloat.

And, yeah, if it's not coming in,

you start getting the spotlight put on you a little bit.

A bit over a week ago, one of the contractors got shafted.

Dan's laid off five contractors from 1870 in the past six months.

Donny's the last man standing.

I've been told I am part of the furniture here.

So Dan keeps telling me I'm part of the furniture.

So I'm hoping that that's true.

We need to talk about paying this lease.

Lee's hoping he can ink a sweet deal with Matt and Damo

to sublease some gold-rich dirt off them.

1870 was a good lease.

This one is just as good.

We've got some ground here. What are you thinking?

We really only need 100, 150 acres.

But I want to pop over the back here somewhere.

I want to be close to the back of 1870.

This lease I'm looking to peg is right on the back of 1870.

Yeah, it's close to Donny, but there's good gold there,

and that's the land I want.

So they're just going to have to deal with it.

So you want to walk up and make sure you're comfortable with it,

but you probably need to have a bit of a look-see.

You want me down there digging?

We need to see if you've got any gas in the tank.

We need to test you out.

We've known Lee for a long time,

but having him as a potential neighbour is a bit of a different thing.

Oh, stop showing off. Please go down there and put some proper gas in.

There's a little bit of angst around.

So I wanted to spend a bit of time with him in the cut,

just make sure that we can still trust him.

Trust is everything in the gold fields,

and Lee comes with more questions than answers.

We've got to do some digging.

We've got a paper cut, hey? We've got a paper cut this morning.

Here comes Dan down to do his micromanaged check on Donny

because he's not finding a lot of gold.

He must be eating it or stealing it or there was something wrong.

Dan is the mine manager at 1870.

It's his job to keep a close eye on Donny's progress

and report back to the mine's owners, Ritchie and Kimberley.

Hiya, Donny.

Dan!

Dan also gets a cut of the mine's profits.

He wants to see gold on volume, no excuses.

Where are you going?

Are you having a win?

No.

I don't know, there might be four grams in there for the last couple of days.

So we kept Donny on because he's been here the longest,

he knows the lease fairly well.

He should be capable of getting up to an ounce a day.

Four grams in three days.

It's just not showing up like I want it to.

Every bloody day is the same.

I'm not under gold, I'm not under gold.

It's a joke, he's been doing it for how long now?

Trying to come into this bench,

hoping there's a drop off a bench in there somewhere

that might produce.

Bloody 320 acres out here to find gold

and he can't even do it.

Yeah, man, I need more gold.

I'm relying on you.

He's the only one digging at the moment.

All I can do is try.

All right, well, I'm going to keep running, I've got other stuff to do.

Well, keep digging, keep trying.

Well, you can try harder.

Try harder.

All you can do is dig and hope it's there.

It's not a proven science.

At the moment, it's just not working for either of us.

The writing's on the wall, you can sort of see it,

even though they tell you you're part of the furniture.

Even furniture gets eaten by termites sometimes.

You have to throw it out, eh?

The Swiss Digging's mining lease, Claremont, Queensland.

Let's go see what we can find today.

Dennis is the owner of the lease.

62 acres of scrub, red dirt and dried-up creek beds.

The game's changed around here now.

There's a lot of players that are moving in.

We've got three main players out here at the moment in Claremont.

Obviously, we've got Scratchy Moo.

We've got Dan, over at 1870, and myself here on Swiss,

so I think we're all going at it pretty hammer and tongs at the moment.

Water.

This is like my big playpen.

I love coming out here and utilising machines and working by myself.

Dennis has set himself a season target of 100 ounces,

worth around $500,000.

At the halfway point of the season, he's only managed to bank $110,000.

Dennis needs to do much better.

I've put a target on at 100 ounces, which I think is a tough call,

but having said that, I've done the ledger.

We're going to need it.

Dennis has already invested three-quarters of a million dollars into the mine.

He calls this a semi-retirement nesting.

But if he fails, he'll burn a hole right through his savings.

I mean, I love doing this.

Sitting here in this car, just absolutely loving life.

You can't ask for better.

Dennis runs a one-man scrape-and-detect operation.

We've got warring going on in Claremont at the moment.

He's a wild old town.

The price of gold is just making them do really silly things, I think.

I'm out here, all by my little lonesome,

digging away, trying to stay out of all that rubbish.

They can have it all to their own.

I'm more than happy doing what I'm doing here.

Yeah, I sort of didn't expect to dig this, like, mega open pit here.

At Scratchy Moo, Damo's digging down deeper

to try and expose more potential pay dirt.

I'm really at the extent of the boom on the excavator,

but it looks like we'll be able to get to the bottom just.

Matt and Damo will need to use every trick in the book

to hit their $500,000 target.

This scrabble that I'm setting aside here,

spread it out and redetect it.

You get a lot more gold out of that.

To improve their chances,

they're running two separate mining crews 100 metres apart.

What's in there, Bluey?

Matt's helped out by his mate, Bluey.

Ding, ding, ding.

How's that spoil looking?

Yeah, beautiful this time.

And Damo's now got Lee to help him out.

Don't need to do any more?

No. OK.

It's good to come up and see the ground they're on.

It's a real bonus if you're going to try and buy something,

understand what the ground's doing, what you're looking for.

All right, let's do this.

Scratchy Moo was only recently approved by the government

for commercial-scale mining.

The approval was a major coup for the duo, Damo and Matt.

I know Damo is scratchy.

Wanders through the bush like a scratchy chicken.

I wander around like a Miranda and cow like most detectorists do.

So they call me the Moo Cow.

So that's our little side joke,

and that's the name of the lease is Scratchy Moo.

Start in this corner and work our way to that corner.

Here we go, first swing.

Damo and Matt first met at 1870,

where they were both working as contractors.

Where are you?

Until mine manager Dan unceremoniously gave them the boot.

Bad blood runs deep in Claremont.

Getting thrown off 1870,

it clearly acted as the catalyst for us to go,

OK, well, we're applying energy in a different way.

And that led to where we are now.

So thanks, Dan, for being here.

Claremont's known for its high-grade gold.

400,000 ounces has already been extracted from the area,

valued at around $2 billion.

And there's estimated to be

another $750 million worth of gold reserves left to uncover.

Donnie's problem is he can't find any of it.

Hey, mate, how are you?

Yeah, good. How about yourself?

Dan's running out of patience.

He's on Zoom to the mine's owner, Richie.

This call's probably not a nice, easy call,

but anyway, it needs to be done in relation to Donnie.

Dan has already fired five contractors.

Now Donnie's in the firing line.

I've seen him pull out good gold in the past.

And all of a sudden, it's just like it's just dropped off.

Look, I've just been down and checked on him.

He's got maybe three, four grams max in three days.

I think he's losing gold or something's happening to the gold.

Out here in the gold fields, trust is everything.

I don't trust Donnie.

At the end of the day, I don't think he's suited to you, mate,

but it's going to be a Richie call.

Whoa, there's a wobble. There's a wobble.

Lee wants to find out if the rumours of big gold

at the Scratchy Moo lease are true

before he decides whether to buy into it or not.

I'm going to have to try and secure this parcel of land.

Right, I've had enough now. He's already gassed out.

But before I throw all this money down,

I need to know the gold's here,

and then I'm going to get my money back.

All right.

We're going to have one for the jar here, Lee?

Yeah.

God, you've got some gusto.

Me? I'm a bit excited.

There it is.

Well, that's about a .2.

That's it. First nugget of the day.

And it begins.

A $50 nugget from their first swing is a promising start,

but it's well short of each crew's daily target of one ounce.

This can be really time-consuming, to tell you the truth,

but every one of those little golds,

I call them $50 Tic Tacs and $500 jelly beans,

and you just keep adding them up.

I wonder how Lee's going over there getting his hands dirty.

He had the gloves on this morning.

He was scared he was getting some bit of grease

under his fingernails.

He's got soft hands like a baker.

What are you trying to protect, your office hands or something?

Yeah.

To go with these gloves?

Well, otherwise I'd rip the **** out of me hand,

wouldn't I, on the courts?

Computer hands.

I'm not a miner, so to speak.

I'm more in the entrepreneurial side of the business.

This one glove, Michael Jackson sort of stuff, I don't know.

These boys want to see me in the cut.

They like seeing me on the end of a pick,

and they like seeing me with blisters.

Oh, I just chucked it out.

The work experience keeps dropping the target.

Lee may need to take off his gloves and get dirty

if he hopes to turn the $50 Tic Tacs into $500 jelly beans.

I'm done. I'm absolutely done with it.

I've had enough.

At 18.70, Dan wants Donnie gone,

but it's up to Richie to decide.

I'm really frustrated how Donnie's mining.

I thought with his knowledge he'd be able to actually help us out.

However, he's finding bugger all gold.

It's really not worth keeping him here.

Alright, Dan, look, I understand everything you're saying,

and I appreciate what you're saying.

It's wasting land, it's wasting our time,

and, to be honest, I just don't trust it.

You can't find gold in separate China

or something else has happened.

Look, I don't know if getting rid of Donnie right now

is the right decision for me,

but just give me a little bit of time to think about it.

It's your choice. I mean, I've spoken my piece.

Uh-huh. I appreciate that.

Catch ya. Bye.

Is that the result you're after?

Nah, not really.

It's, uh...

Just, I mean, you've got to keep dealing with it, you know.

I was hoping just to get it knocked on the head

so I can get on with my life, and...

Anyway, hopefully it doesn't take too long.

Richard!

Can you get a photo of April and I?

Oh, good idea! Of course, how do I know?

So, we live on the beautiful Gold Coast.

Social arts, I guess.

Every day of the week, there's always lunches and charity events.

Always something going on.

Make sure you get my good side.

The hard life of an Instagram husband.

Cheers! No-one understands the pain.

Richie made his fortune in IT and the stock market.

Kimberly's doing her best to spend it all.

Love going out, dinners and drinks

and just enjoying the Gold Coast lifestyle.

I like the creature comforts of home.

Welcome to my wardrobe.

Her wardrobe is bigger than a three-car garage.

Pink Barbie gumboots, of course.

Cute.

Most people have hanging space of maybe six, eight feet.

She's got 98 feet.

So, I've got plenty of hats to go with every outfit.

There, so she says she's coming and she's going to sell the gear,

but it's never going to happen.

One of every colour.

If Richie's going to keep Kimberly

in the style to which she's become well-accustomed,

he's going to need $18.70 to start paying.

And quick.

He's always loved watching the gold mining shows

and he's always had in his head that one day

he'll go off and start trying to find some gold one day.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, and then he bought a gold mine.

And it's not just any gold mine.

$18.70 has a history of conflict,

business bust-ups and operational fails.

But Richie's confident he and mine manager Dan

can turn it all around.

His glamorous lifestyle depends on it.

The simple fact is that we have obviously put a load of money

into the mine, so we have to make it work.

Look at the look of this ground.

If it is an old creek base, it's made a turn, which is brilliant,

which is exactly what we're after,

because that's where the gold gets held up.

So it should produce.

At Swiss Diggings,

Dennis is following a dried-up old creek bed,

which last month delivered 11 ounces of gold

and a $55,000 payday.

Looking good.

Had the lease for two and a half years

and I'm systematically taking the lease out.

So what I'm effectively doing is starting one corner and working it.

That's a bit of gold.

Not very big, but it's a good indication that it's still running this way.

A nice...

can of beer there.

Dennis is chasing alluvial gold.

What's going on here?

Gold particles have flowed along these riverbeds for centuries

and some of it, Dennis is hoping a lot of it,

still remains trapped

in the crevices and corners of the river bedrock.

That's about a two-and-a-half-grammer.

That's $440.

This little run's doing all right for me at the moment.

Bit of luck.

There might be some big fellas floating around through here.

At 18.7, Donnie is doing the very same thing

as Dennis, Matt and Damo.

But on his patch, the gold is nowhere to be found.

Donnie needs a small miracle

if he's any chance of keeping his contract with 18.7 intact.

Not showing up.

Got Donnie down there digging at the moment.

I've been up here for a week assembling this purely by myself.

Mine manager Dan's grand plan

is to replace contractors with gold processing machines

and to become one of the biggest gold mining operations in the area.

Out here we're on 320 acres

and we're probably losing about 40% to 50% of gold

by just doing scraping and detecting.

So this is us starting upscale, I suppose.

He's already spent a million dollars of Ritchie and Kimberley's money

on expensive processing machinery.

He too is under immense pressure to deliver.

It's all good us spending the money,

but we've got to be getting something in return

and having contractors that aren't bringing it in for you

makes it fairly hard.

Doing all this stuff by myself,

I'm not actually out there digging gold.

I know this is going to pay off, but this is frustrating as hell.

And it's starting to take its toll.

It's old, yeah.

That's a good one.

Team Scratchy Moo is on the gold.

And the best thing about it, every one of them has never been seen before.

Every one of them is unique.

And every one of them is worth a quid.

Seeing that much gold come out, although it's little,

it's going to be viable. It's going to be more than viable.

Hey, Moo, are you on channel?

Woof, woof, woof!

Moo!

Moo!

Damo and Matt are a well-oiled and very tight machine.

Trying to find out whether you find any gold.

I found a couple of pieces, probably about five or ten.

If Lee can manage to wrestle some land away from him,

it could be a game-changer for his bank balance.

I know it's good ground over here,

so just a matter of if we can do a deal or not.

Hear that warble?

It could be onto something here.

At 1870, Donnie's run-in with Dan is weighing heavily on his mind.

I'm a little bit worried because the new owners have come in

and systematically I've seen contractors getting dismissed.

Metal.

That could have quite easily been a 0.2, 0.3, $40, $50 nugget.

But not today, I'm afraid.

To keep contracting here is very important for me.

I mean, it's all I've got,

so if I don't produce and I don't find the gold, it's hard.

All I can do is keep digging, keep detecting.

If you're going to go down, you might as well go down fighting.

The Gold Coast, a playground for the rich and glamorous.

It's where Richie runs his IT business and his new mining operation.

Yo, guys, what's going on?

Richie's checking in with Dan about Donnie and the new equipment.

What's the latest?

In relation to Donnie, I don't want him here.

You don't want him here.

It means I'm a one-man band.

So we're going to have to work something out there

because, man, it's taken its toll big time.

I'm trying to put together machinery up at camp

and I'm by myself doing all that.

I sort of need you out here if you can.

How long would I have to come up for?

Look, I know you're busy.

I need a hand for at least a month, at least.

If I can put you into a machine or train yard, I need help.

But, mate, if we have to do it, we have to do it,

but how am I going to tell Kimberley that she's going to Claremont?

That sounds like a Richie problem.

We're doing this dig here,

and hopefully what's going to end up happening,

I'm going to pick up the Old Creek Basin.

As we're digging,

Dennis is chasing a goldman through a dried-up river bed.

What we've been using is a method called lining

that the old timers used to use.

Gold follows a line,

so the old guys used to point a bit of gold one end

and then they'd start chasing it and chasing it forward.

It's actually paid off pretty well.

In one little area down there,

I've got about $50,000 worth of gold in one area or one cut.

Definitely rising up.

This floor is coming up at me.

This is not ideal.

The bedrock is getting closer to the surface.

Ooh, see, there you go, that bedrock for you.

Bedrock is the foundation of the river bed.

While gold can still be found in the cracks and crevices,

the solid rocky barrier makes it harder to mine.

When you get a full cut of bedrock,

it's pretty much dead, the hole is dead.

No gold's getting through that.

Back on the Gold Coast,

Richie's about to drop a bombshell on his wife, Kimberly.

OK, Richard's just got home.

I'll talk to you later. OK, bye.

Hello. Hello.

Are you going to kill me?

I've been speaking to Dan. Yeah?

I think we need to move to Claremont for a while.

What?

For how long?

A month, two, three, I don't know.

What would I do in Claremont?

Work.

Because I can't do it by myself,

and it's just Dan up there, me, you.

You can buy anything you want up there.

What shop's that? Post office.

Kimberly's a Gold Coast socialite

with all of the trappings that come with it.

I'm sure there's a nail salon up there.

I'm sure there's not.

I think we'll discuss this later on on camera,

about me moving to the gold mine.

We'll get you some gold mining clothes.

I've always wanted to.

Just stand there, go.