Gold Rush

Show me the money.

...Parker and his team find themselves

caught between a rock...

What are you guys doing?

There could be a load of gold in it.

...And a hard place...

I can't see anything!

...As they grapple with a monster machine...

Parker spent so much money on that dry blower.

Whole thing just shut down.

...And mine the richest ground

they've ever seen.

That's a nugget.

We haven't had this much on the line for the whole trip.

For sake!

Go on! The whole thing's going in half!

Yeah!

captions paid for by discovery communications

-good fire, tyler. -Thank you.

I like our stove.

-It's wicked, isn't it? -Yeah.

This is an old sheep station,

and this is the original homestead.

-Is this the original oven? -Yeah.

This is what they used to cook their food.

Make sure you don't burn my toast.

What we having on it?

We've got vegemite and butter.

What's vegemite?

It's my favorite spread by far.

Everyone loves vegemite here.

Fred, you're gonna love it.

oh, get out, fred.

horrible.

Oh, my god.

fred.

You're offending a whole country right now.

I'm sorry, australia, but that is horrible.

Parker schnabel and his team are six weeks

into an 8-week prospecting mission...

-Let's go, guys. -We're coming.

...To expand and extend

his mining season year-round.

from sandstone, they're heading 30 miles northeast

to the murchison gold fields to meet a local mining clan.

So the people we're going to meet today are the mcclarens,

and they're one of the biggest mining families by far.

Oh, wow.

They've got some land and leases to sell.

This is a good lead then. Yeah.

They've got about 800 square kilometers of mining leases.

Wow.

Is he, like, actively mining this ground?

Yeah, yeah. Sure is.

With what? A wash plant?

I haven't seen a drop of water.

He's got a dry blower actually.

Well, that's really the only option out here, is dry blowing.

Show me the money.

The mcclarens' leases are located

in one of the driest places on earth,

with only 5 inches of rainfall a year,

the family operates western australia's biggest dry blower.

Worth half a million dollars,

it's designed to remove fine gold

from pay dirt without a drop of water.

Look at that.

Oh. What?

That's enormous. -That's huge.

It's the biggest by far in the area.

Yeah.

The first dry blower was invented

by prospector stephen lorden in 1893.

It revolutionized mining

in the drought-ravaged regions of western australia.

Hello.

So who are these people?

Cass, this is fred.

-Nice to meet you. -Hello.

I'm parker.

Danny. Nice to meet you.

Nice machine, isn't it?

-Oh, wow. -That's a big old plant.

The biggest thing we've seen

since we've been in australia actually.

Really?

Get this shut down so we can hear, eh?

Yeah.

So, muz, how much gold were you getting out of the dry blower?

That's pretty cool. Quite the machine.

So you haven't used a dry blower before?

No. We saw, like,

a very miniature version of this the other day,

but I've never really been around them before.

Yeah.

So what brings you to this end of western australia?

Well, we've been looking at a bunch

of mining property all over australia,

and tyler suggested we come talk to you guys

and see if you guys had any ground around.

Depends on what you're looking for.

We're looking for a big block of ground

that has lots of gold on it

that we could actually come mine 12 months a year.

You're from the snow.

Yeah, exactly.

Huh. Is there ground for sale?

Yeah, so we're here at the goat farm.

We essentially want to go over to the 3 mile.

So this is the piece of ground

that we might be able to prospect on?

Awesome.

Should we go check it out?

Definitely. Let's do it.

The ground the mcclarens are willing to sell

is a 29-acre plot called 3 mile.

It's a prime piece of virgin ground located on the edge

of their 200,000-acre property, all of which sits on top

of the 25,000-square-mile yilgarn craton,

where geologists estimate

30% of the world's unmined gold is buried

worth $800 billion.

Tyler, have you mined here before?

Me and family mined just over that way.

And is it good? Yeah, we did well out of it.

We got 25 ounces of nuggets.

Oh, wow.

So I can actually vouch for the ground.

It's the richest in area by far.

Wow.

so is this 3 mile?

Got you.

Is it alright if we come test some of this ground?

I guess the problem is we don't have any real testing equipment.

We've been looking for a dry blower,

but we haven't been able to find anything that works

or that people will let us use,

so is there any way we could your guys'?

The dry blower is in really high demand, to be honest.

Okay.

So I don't know how long you would like to use it for.

Maybe a couple days?

Okay.

What kind of, like, money would you want for it?

So $3,000 a day would be what you would usually

hire the dry blower out for.

I don't know. That's a lot of money.

I'm guessing there's not another one within, like,

100 miles of here, is there?

No.

That's why we're paying you 3 grand a day.

What happens to the gold we find?

How about we split it half and half, 50/50?

Well, we're doing the labor.

Alright.

That's a deal. Let's do it.

-Alright. -Thank you, guys.

Cass and muz seem like they're a bit cagey,

which I'm used to.

You know, hey, muz is not screwing around

when it comes to negotiating,

and 3 grand a day is a lot for a wash plant.

But, you know, tyler is personally vouching

for this ground, so that means something.

You know, she wouldn't be as confident as she seems

if there weren't a real opportunity here.

Parker has obviously been around australia,

but this is one of the better opportunities

he's gonna come across.

I'm excited that they've let us use the dry blower

because we have zero other options,

but, yeah, we have to pay the price for it,

which I understand.

I just hope that we can find enough gold

to hopefully pay for some of it.

Alright. Where should we start?

Yeah. Let's do it.

Parker's $6,000 deal for just 2 days

prospecting with the dry blower

means he needs over 10 ounces of gold to break even.

If he's successful, it will also mean

the 3 mile claim is the richest he has ever tested.

I was saying that was the easy part.

Now we got to get it there.

Who's driving the truck?

I'm not a semi-truck driver.

Are you sure you trust me?

Alright.

Should be able to figure it out.

Good to go.

hey.

Come on, mate.

We're moving.

Yes.

When was the last time you drove one of these?

Oh, it's been a while.

Mitch does all this stuff now.

To reach the mcclarens' virgin ground,

parker must drive the 45-ton plant 3 miles

along a bush track.