[Sarge] Guys, guys, guys.
I've got reports of swallowing levers, I've got reports of flash flooding.
We need to bag out and bag out now, so pack your [bleep].
Put your foot on the gas
and let's get the hell out of here.
Right now. This is not a discussion.
- Thanks, Sarge. - [Sarge] Let's go.
- [Parker] Okay. - [Dan] We need to get the [bleep] out of here now.
Give it some. Let's go, go, go.
[Tyler] The closest town is on evacuation watch.
An alert has been sent out for them to get ready to evacuate.
[Jeff] Look at the water across the road. Holy [bleep].
[Tyler] Okay.
[Dan] Uh, we're driving in a river.
Do we have an escape route?
Oh, my [bleeping].
Ty, when I'm here before you,
- you know you're [bleeping] up. - Late.
So you can give me [bleep], you can give me [bleep], you cannot.
I've worked here every morning since we got here.
Danny, Jeff, I'm really sorry.
No, I don't give a [bleep].
We're allowed to be late once in awhile, right?
[Parker] Let's go.
[narrator] Twenty-seven year old Parker Schnabel
is expanding his goldmining operation.
He's on the hunt for a state of the art wash plant in New Zealand,
capable of securing him a multi-million dollar pay out
on his new claim in Alaska.
[Parker] Unfortunately, there's no college class or degree
for wash plant design and efficiency.
We have to go out and find the people that have pioneered
the technology and develop these ideas.
You know, New Zealand's full of them.
We just have to go hunt them down.
[Tyler] So we're going to see a man named Eddie.
He's pretty well known in these parts. He builds wash plants.
- Eddie Gray. - Eddie Gray.
Yeah, the Gray brothers. They're well known everywhere.
You've heard of him before, Parker?
[Parker] Yeah.
- Well, that's amazing. - [Parker] Yeah.
[Tyler] Well, we're going to the right place then, aren't we?
[narrator] From the central Tasman region,
the team head 150 miles south to Greymouth
to the legendary Gray brothers workshop.
[Dan] Gray brothers. There we go.
Are you excited about this one, Jeff?
[Jeff] Yeah, totally. I've never met him, so this will be really cool.
[Dan] Wow, big old workshop.
[narrator] Goldminer and engineer Eddie Gray
has over 40 years' experience making and selling wash plants all over the world
including the Yukon.
To date, his workshop has made over 100 different plants
for some of the best goldminers on the planet.
[Eddie] Hi. How's you go?
- Hi. Tyler. - Hi, how are you?
- Jeff. - How's it go?
[Jeff] Nice to meet you.
- Parker. - Parker. How you going? I've seen you before.
Quite an impressive workshop you've got.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
We built it all around mining. Coal mining, gold mining.
Well, I mean, you guys, you know, New Zealanders have always had
some of the best mining equipment.
- That's why we're here. - Yeah.
- [Eddie laughs] - [Parker] Learn from the best, right?
[narrator] Eddie's crew of 35
take on average 12 weeks
to build a custom plant from scratch.
Parker's looking for one design in particular.
[Parker] Some of the ground that we're looking at in Alaska,
it does have some clay in it.
The nice thing about a trommel is it can do everything.
- Right? - [Eddie] Yeah.
Part of the reason why I'm on this trip is to figure out
if we wanna get a trommel or not.
The more basic, the better.
[narrator] Trommels break up coal rich paydirt by rotating a steel drum
and blasting the material with high pressure water.
Making them the best at separating fine gold from sticky clay.
A problem on Parker's new claim.
[Parker] The barrels for the trommel,
- you'll roll those yourselves. - We'll roll them, yeah.
There's a real art in getting your trommel right.
You can see they got their welding stations all nicely set up.
This stuff right here, uh, on that steel,
is becoming hard to get.
Good to see they got lots of stock.
It's awesome. It's nice to be across the world
and see that they're doing the same thing.
And I know they do good work here
because we have a good working relationship with them
and there's quite a bit of history.
Um, so yeah, it's good to see. I'm definitely stoked.
[Tyler] I am so intrigued by this.
- This whole machine. - Yeah.
- [Tyler] What is it? - [Ali] Well, they call it a plasma cutter.
Oh, wicked. Are you firing it up now?
Yeah, I am. Just about to start.
- You can watch if you want. - That is right up my alley.
Am I all right standing here?
Yeah, you're all right, bro.
Oh, [bleep].
Bloody hell.
Get out the way.
[narrator] At 45,000 degrees Fahrenheit,
this plasma cutter burns four and a half times hotter than the surface of the sun
and can cut through steel 2 inches thick.
[Dan] Oh, my [bleep].
- It's pretty aggressive, isn't it? - [Ali] Yeah.
[Dan] There you go. It's a beautiful looking thing.
- It's cool to finally come here and, like, meet you guys. - [Eddie] Oh, it's great.
We've been thinking that we might try to buy a plant if we can find one
in the country.
You could've, um...
Sold a screen a couple of weeks ago.
Well, did you have one sitting?
Yeah, we had some sitting here. Yeah.
How long ago? Before you had a couple of machines here
that could've just been taken straight out of the door?
- Two, three weeks ago. - [Tyler] Oh.
It's always the way it works, though.
Timing. Two weeks.
And the place was just full of gold screw trommels, gold screens and...
So here we're... we're pretty flat out.
[Tyler] That would've been good to see.
When you don't need it, and they're everywhere
- and when you need one, they're all gone. - [Eddie] Yeah.
Well, one of my mates got a flat to sell.
Who's that?
Allan Birchfield is a good friend of mine.
I've heard of the Birchfields, I've never met any of them, though.
[Eddie] They've been miners for generations on the West Coast.
And they've built, um, about gold screens
for three generations of that family.
Oh, wow.
He's got a machine for sale.
If you wanna give Tony Beets a go,
that'd be the machine to have a look at.
- Well, we should go have a look at it then. - [Eddie] Yeah.
Eddie has suggested the Birchfields
and yeah, they're a huge name around here.
I've heard whispers of them.
Eddie gave us the address and has given Allan a heads up that we're gonna head over.
So I'm excited to go and see Allan and see what he has to offer.
[narrator] Hot on the trail of Eddie's lead,
the team follow the Grey River 20 miles northeast
towards the town of Ngahere
to the highly successful Birchfield family claim.
This weather's pretty awful, mate.
It's horrible.
I feel like the mass of the rain has finally hit as well.
Look how high the river is.
[Tyler] Yeah, there's flood warnings all around us.
Very high.
I see a right hand turn here.
[Tyler] Is this it?
- Maybe. - Yeah.
Do it.
- [Jeff] Do it? - [Tyler] Looks like we're leaving
any form of main road.
[Dan] Oh. Go on, Jeff.
Wowee. [bleep] Hello.
[Dan whistles]
[Jeff] What is this?
[Tyler] That's a bridge.
We're not gonna fit... Oh, my [bleep]. That thing's frickin' rickity.
[Dan] You're not driving through that.
Then how are we supposed to get through?
[Jeff] How do we get around this?
We're gonna take the whole roof off.
[Tyler] Um...
Go down there.
- [Tyler] I don't know. - [Jeff] Let's try this.
- [Dan] Are you going for it, Jeff? - [Tyler] Is it safe?
[Jeff] I don't know. It's our only shot.
Danny, do you think that's safe?
[Dan] Do you reckon... I don't know. Hang on.
- Stop there for a sec. - [Tyler] Yeah, just...
[Dan] Let's have a look at it.
[Tyler] Parker, get out and walk through it. See how deep it is.
You, Tyler. You're the rain expert.
[all laughing]
Let's just do it.
- [Parker] Go. - Are you gonna slam it?
- You ready? Yeah, I am. - No, don't [bleep] go psycho.
Oh, my [bleeping].
Oh, [bleeping].
[Dan] Whoa!
[Jeff] That was pretty deep.
[all laughing]
[Tyler] Oh.
[Dan] That was great.
Good job.
[Jeff] Holy [bleep].
Look at the size of that.
[Dan] That isn't a dredge.
Yeah, it is.
- That is huge. - [Jeff] That's huge.
[Dan] It looks like a massive big building.
It's a big floating building.
- Holy [bleep]. - How do they even float that?
[narrator] Parker and his crew are meeting Allan Birchfield,
the owner of a 90-year-old supersize dredge.
At 3,850 tons,
it's the largest bucket lined dredge in the world.
[Tyler] I've never seen a dredge that big ever.
[Dan] Gees. It's a monster.
What do you wanna do?
Do you wanna go with me, Dan, and we'll go see if they're here?
Yeah.
- Should we wait here? - [Dan] Yeah, wait here for the time being.
We'll just see if...
Go find him first.
- Okay, cool. - And then we'll give you a shout, yeah?
- Yeah. Okay. - Cool.
We'll be here.
[Dan exclaims]
[Dan] Good grief.
That's insane.
[laughs] Hope we're not trespassing.
Quite the maze.
This thing's huge.
Hello?
[Dan] Mate, it feels like something out of Lord of the Rings.
[Parker] Hello?
You could get lost in this place.
[Parker] This makes Tony Beets' dredges look like pocket toys.
[Dan laughs]
I feel like we should stay here until he gives us the okay.
Yeah. That makes sense.
Hello?
[narrator] Coming up...
[bleeping]
[Jeff] Holy [bleep].
[man speaking]
[Tyler] I'm literally standing on gold.
Parker, you'd have done good, mate.
- [Parker] Oh. - [Tyler] You gotta be happy with that.
[Parker] Hello?
[narrator] In New Zealand, south of the Paparoa National Park,
Parker and his crew are exploring a wash plant for his Alaskan operation,
but the owner is nowhere to be found.
Hello?
[Allan] Uppo. Up here!
[Parker] Ah, hi! How do we get up there?
[Allan] Up those stairs over there.
He didn't have a gun, did he?
[Parker] No.
[Tyler] I don't like it.
- [tapping on window] - [bleep]
- [Tyler] Hello. - [Ian speaking]
I'm Tyler.
[Ian speaking]
- [Jeff] Sure. - Yeah. Sure.
Holy, it was [bleeping].
- I'm Parker. - Parker? Allan. G'day.
- [Dan] Nice to meet you, mate. - [Allan] Good.
Um, Eddie Gray sent us.
He mentioned that you might have a wash plant that's for sale.
Well, unless you count this one.
[Parker] This one?
[laughs] This thing is so huge.
So is this thing, like, actually for sale?
[Allan] Oh, a deal could be done.
[Parker] Gotcha.
[narrator] Owned by Allan Birchfield and his family for over 30 years,
the huge Canary dredge has the capacity to churn
through the gold-rich flood plains
of the Grey River in record time.
The 300-foot long bucket line
scoops up 1,000 cubic yards of pay an hour.
And deposits it into the 12-foot wide trommel
where 10,000 gallons of water per minute washes the dirt
and freeze the gold.
Since it was first run in 1932,
the dredge has mined close to 400,000 ounces of gold
worth nearly $700 million in today's money.
Do you have time to show us around? Is that all right?
Yep. Look around here.
You can get in if you want.
[Dan] Standing in a trommel.
This is mad.
[Allan] It's a thousand of those panels in there.
We run the same design, but in our screen decks.
- [Allan] Yeah. - But like with the pegs and everything.
Yep. Plus you're pumping 10,000 gallons a minute
- out of this thing here. - In this.
Yeah.
Wild. Very big trommel.
I've never seen a trommel that big.
- [Dan] Really cool. - [Parker] Yeah, unreal.
Like, it's really, really cool. Super interesting.
[Allan] Well, it did work perfectly.
- Well, not perfectly, but... - [Parker] Yeah.
- You know. - It did its job.
Yeah, okay. It did its job.
[both laughing]
With quite a bit of defect.
[Chris] You guys wanna see something cool? Have a look over here.
[Tyler] Oh, wow.
[narrator] Tyler and Jeff are joined by former dredge master Ian
and Allan's son, Chris.
- [Jeff] Crazy. - [Tyler] Holy [bleep]. Look at them all.
[men chuckling]
- [Ian] Hundred and five. - [Tyler] Hundred and five?
[Chris] So when it was digging,
it was about 20 buckets we go past every minute.
Um...
So yeah, each bucket travels up, tips up here,
comes back down, takes another scoop.
Is that still pay in the bucket?
[Chris] Yeah, that's pay dirt.
[Tyler] So there's gold in the bucket still.
- In theory. - [all laughing]
You're on a good patch. Wow.
[Allan] If we go around here,
that's your primary jigs there.
[Parker] Nothing... I've never spin any around anything anywhere close to this big.
[Allan] You can see there how it works.
Got your wedge wire screen and you've got your ragging
sitting on top of it.
[narrator] Massive pulsating drums in the 30-foot wide jig
sift 500 tons of pay dirt per hour
through layers of coarse material known as ragging.
Vibrating mesh screens then separate out the soil from the fine gold,
increasing potential gold recovery.
You really find much gold that wouldn't fall through that?
Not much. Not many nuggets here.
So at my grandpa's place, we had one jig about the size of one of these cells.
And on this one there's like 32 of them.
Sixty-four times bigger.
- Is there still a lot of gold to be mined around here? - [Allan] Yeah.
[Parker] This is the control room, huh?
When this thing was running, did you ever run it?
- Generally preferred not to. - [Parker] Right.
You probably had a lot of other things going on when this was running.
Yes, exactly.
It only takes a crew of three.
- On board. - [Allan] On board. You got one guy on the cab
and two on the dig.
[Parker] I've gotta say, like, we've toured all over a lot of mine sites
and this is, like, has them all beat.
It really is so impressive.
You'd get one over Tony Beets, wouldn't ya?
No kidding. He wouldn't like that.
[chuckles]
So is this thing, like, actually for sale?
[Allan] Yeah, a deal could be done.
[Jeff] There you guys are.
[Parker] What's going on?
- Checking the dredge out. This is awesome. - Yeah, it's wild, huh?
So have we done the deal?
Parker's buying it. We're off home.
What?
You're full of [bleep].
[Allan chuckles]
[Jeff] What size are we chopping it up into to get it back?
No, we're just gonna chew our way out to the ocean and then tow it...
- [Jeff] Tow it. - ...over to Alaska.
- [Jeff] I like it. - And then up the Yukon River.
- [Jeff] That sounds like a journey. - [Dan laughs]
[Parker] I mean, it's closer to what I'm looking for than the last wash plant
that we looked at.
But you overshot now.
We went and looked at like a 20 yard an hour plant
that was for sale and I'm like, a little small.
Now we come here and it's like, I feel like Goldilocks, like...
- [all laughing] - Too small. No, this is too big, Tyler.
[all laughing]
I promise we'll find one that's just right.
I really appreciate the time, though.
One of the cooler days that I've ever had in my life, honestly.
Thanks so much for having us.
All right. Well, thanks, guys.
I really appreciate it.
- Thank you. - [Jeff] Thank you.
- Cheers, guys. - [Ian] Bye.
[Parker] It's pissing down.
The dredge is amazing,
but we need to get back on track and get further down the trail
and towards some decisions.
[thunder rumbling]
I've got small wash plant syndrome now.
Aw.
[Sarge] Guys, guys, guys.
I've got reports swallowing levers, I've got reports of flash flooding.
We've got 100 mills of water in the mountains.
We need to bag out and bag out now, so pack your [bleep].
Put your foot on the gas
and let's get the hell out of here.
- Thanks, Sarge. - [Sarge] Let's go.
- [bleeping] - [Dan] We need to get the [bleep] out of here now.
[engine starts]
[Dan] I've never seen Sarge serious before.
[narrator] Eight inches of rain falls in an hour.
Swelling the Grey River by more than 3 feet.
Oh, my [bleep]. Is that the river?
[Jeff] It's actually gotten higher. Holy [bleep].
- Looks deeper. - It looks deeper.
[Tyler] Oh, my... Oh, my [bleep]. Oh, my [bleeping]!
[Dan] Give it some. Let's go, go, go.
[Tyler] The closest town is on evacuation watch.
An alert has been sent out for them to get ready to evacuate.
[narrator] New Zealand is no stranger to natural disasters.
During a freak one in 500 year storm,
water surged over the banks of the Rangitaiki River
leading to mass evacuation and millions of dollars worth of damage.
So we're not camping it, so I think, like literally,
the first hotel that we come to.
[Jeff] Look at the water across the road. Holy [bleep].
[Tyler] Okay.
[Dan] Uh, we're driving in a river.
Do we have an escape route?
[Dan] [bleep] me.
[Jeff] Look at the water over here, guys.
That guy's house is like in the water almost.
Look right here. Look at the fence.
- His driveway. Look at this driveway. - [Dan] Oh, [bleep] hell.
[bleep]
We can't take this bridge coming up. This whole road's been washed out.
Which bridge is out?
- Dobson. - [Dan] Dobson. Dobson Road is now...
[bleep] I've got a feeling that's how we get to the next [bleep] mine site.
Oh.
Hang on.
It is, hang on.
Okay, we can't get to the next mine site.
We're [bleep].
[Jeff] That is [bleep].
[Tyler] We're definitely not getting to the guy I had planned.
- We're gonna have to get a plan B together. - [Dan] Okay.
The road's washed out. There's no chance.
[Dan] We made it. Well done, everyone.
- Good driving, Jeff. - [Jeff] Thank you.
[narrator] With rain predicted for the next 12 hours,
the crew check into a hotel to wait it out.
[Parker] Like, I'm from the coast. I'm used to rain.
But I don't like rain.
Especially after
after my buddy, David, died last year in a big landslide
after ten inches of rain.
It's always made me a bit...
Whenever it rains I think about it.
Sucks.
And it is still absolutely smashing it down.
I can literally hear it banging against my window,
and you can hear it, you know, the wind is so powerful whipping off the ocean.
I'm so [bleep] exhausted. It's been a huge couple of days.
Feel really bad for the miners that are getting washed out.
We had a couple that we're meant to see,
and we can't even get to them because the roads are just gone.
- Wow, that storm left quick. - Oh, my [bleep], know.
Beautiful out.
[narrator] After a 24 hour delay due to flooding...
Gorgeous now.
[narrator] The team are back on the road.
So, we're going to Louis Nel's mine site.
This is all very last minute, though.
To be honest, I don't know a lot.
So he seems like he's pretty, like, open to us having a look around
and seeing if anything's for sale.
[narrator] The team pivots 70 miles down the coast
to the historic mining settlement of Ruatapu,
on a Hail Mary mission to bring Parker's million dollar shopping trip
back on track.
I've been really stressed out the last couple of day
because I just haven't felt like I've been delivering.
And the miners were pulling out,
we couldn't get to the mine sites I had lined up.
[Tyler] I'm a little bit nervous.
I did not have this planned out whatsoever.
[Louis]
You must be Uncle Louis.
Is this an all right time for you?
Yeah, [bleep] Parker.
Any time, mate.
[Parker] All right, well, good.
You're from South Africa, right?
[Parker] Gotcha.
Okay, so you grew up mining, huh?
First diamond mining back home.
[Parker] You guys were diamond mining?
[Louis]
[narrator] Before moving to the New Zealand gold fields in 2017,
Louis Nel and his son, Michael,
mined diamonds for 20 years in the northern provinces of South Africa.
Their biggest find was an 85 carat gem
worth tens of millions of dollars.
We're struggling to find wash plants that are for sale.
Oh, yeah?
That's really what we're looking for right now, yeah.
We still haven't decided on a trommel, like...
I'm used to screen decks.
[Parker] Mmm-hmm.
[Parker] In the top.
Do you know what would be really cool
is if we could do a little, maybe if we did a little bit of a tour of the place?
Yeah, we can quickly go.
- Is that all right? - Yeah. Come, Parker, let's go.
Great.
[narrator] Louis' 500 acres of gold-rich but clay-filled ground
are similar to Parker's new claim in Alaska,
making it the perfect ground to test drive a plant.
Nice site you got here, Louis.
Oh, [bleep],
- you've got two more plants right over here. - [Louis] Yeah.
[Parker] Holy cow. Plants everywhere, Louis.
[narrator] To bank as much gold as he can
and make the most of his inconsistent pay,
Louis runs five trommels at a time.
[Tyler] I didn't realize that this is a full-on mining operation.
I don't know. What's your first reaction? It looks pretty good to me.
[Jeff] Look at this. This is incredible.
And there's that one there, and that one over there, and one over there.
[Jeff] How many does he have here? Is it six?
I think Parker's gonna like that.
[gasps] Thank [bleep]
[Louis]
Right.
[Parker] Right.
- And that's for sale, Louis? You'd sell that? - Yeah.
[Louis]
Do you notice a difference in recovery rate on the jigs?
- [Louis] Just... - [Parker] Gotcha.
[Dan] Jigs take a little bit more maintenance, don't they? A bit more work?
[Louis]
Right.
[narrator] Using the jigs in addition to sluices
means that even the smallest pieces of gold
are caught across Louis' claim,
maximizing his gold recovery.
[Tyler] I'd love to know how much gold they're finding.
I want to get out and take a look at these things.
- They've even got jigs. - Amazing.
- [Jeff] Parker's gonna be happy. - [Tyler] You reckon?
[Jeff] Yeah, I think you've done it.
- Good work, Tyler. - To be honest,
this was a bit of a fluke I think.
- [Jeff] Well, maybe don't tell him that. - Yeah, I won't.
[Jeff] Keep that on your side.
[Jeff] Kind of like a kid in a candy store right now.
This is perfect.
This is what we've been looking for,
so I'm pretty stoked for Tyler.
[Tyler] Huge sigh of relief when we rocked up.
An amazing mine site, great wash plants, Parker seems happy.
Huge machinery, which is a great start as well.
[Parker] You know, I think this will be a really good mine site for us
because he's got a variety of plants,
and we can see it all working,
and still haven't been around a jig plant that's been running.
[Parker] I really want to go check that jig plant out.
[Parker] Maybe we could, like,
- just spend some time around a few different plants. - Yeah.
And maybe we could even kind of run a test of them,
- just in different types of material - [Louis] Yeah.
and how they wash.
Try to figure out what's best suited for us and for that ground.
[Louis] Yeah. You can pick and choose.
So, which is to be then?
We just saw the birch fields dredge.
- And it has those big jig... - Oh, the big one.
- It has those big jigs on it, so I'm on a bit of a jig kick. - The old one, yeah.
So if it's all right, go run that plant with the jigs on it.
[Parker] Sweet.
- That would be awesome. - [Louis] Yeah.
I'm really interested in that recovery rate difference.
So, if it's all right with you,
- then we can count the number of buckets, - [Louis] Yeah.
and then we'll know what plant ran
- how much yardage - Yeah.
and we can see who has better recovery, huh?
Yeah. As long as you guys do the cleanups yourself, it's all good.
- [all laugh] - That is a real gold miner
- Yeah. - because we all [bleep] hate doing cleanup.
- [Jeff] Sounds like a plan. - [Parker] All right. Shall we head over there?
- [Louis] Yeah. - All right.
- Perfect. - Thanks, guys.
[Parker] For me, it's starting to get to the point
where we need to make some decisions about, you know,
what we're using as a wash plant in Alaska.
So, you know, this is a good place to be right now.
- [Dan] What's your name, mate? - Digger.
- Digger? - Digger, yeah.
[Dan] That's a great name.
[narrator] At Louis Nel's New Zealand claim,
Parker is pitting two wash plants against each other
to determine if a jig is more efficient
at capturing fine gold from clay-rich soil.
What's your opinion of this plant? This one.
[narrator] Jeff is overseeing a six hour test on a six foot red trommel
that processes 160 yards of paydirt an hour.
Right there, now they've got the automatic cleaner on it's a lot better.
Put any sand in it years ago and it used to just flood with sand.
Now they put that automatic cleaner on
it runs through these tables real good.
- How's this one feeling, Jeff? - That feels good, yeah. Perfect.
I've been around one that was in line like this
- at my grandpa's mine site. - Yeah.
[narrator] Parker will feed the six foot yellow trommel.
[Parker] He really liked it.
Right.
[narrator] At 120 yards per hour,
it's 25% slower than Jeff's red one
but has the advantage of an eight ton motorized jig
which should capture more of the hard-to-catch fine gold.
Now I'm running a trommel that's feeding a set of jigs,
which is actually the same kind of setup that my grandpa had,
and so it's kind of cool to be having it happen again.
And, you know, it definitely brings me back home
and makes me think of growing up with Big Nugget.
Those sluice stones look pretty short.
Are they short?
These are the same we've been seeing here, yeah.
- [Dan] They're about the same? - Very short, compared to the Yukon,
and they're a lot longer.
[narrator] Running 40 yards an hour quicker,
Jeff's plant is able to process a higher volume of pay.
And its short sluices feature super-efficient hydraulic ripples,
making the plant easy to transport.
[Jeff] What you're looking for is once the material goes into the trommel
and gets washed and cleaned as it goes down,
you want to make sure that the tailings coming out the end
are nice and washed and there's not lots of fine material on it.
Otherwise, you're either running too fast
or you're not getting a good enough wash,
and eventually you're gonna lose gold.
[Tyler] I am currently clearing the tailings from both wash plants,
and it's also the first loader I've ever driven that is not a wheel.
It's got a stick which is quite out of my comfort zone.
Hopefully no one saw that.
Oh, I should have [bleep] gone forward more for that.
Getting to be able to be out on the field
and actually test these wash plants is so beneficial for us.
I'm really curious to see if the wash plant with the jig wins
or if the wash plant with the sluice box wins.
It's really exciting.
I've taken that corner [bleep] horrifically.
Hopefully no one saw that.
[bleep] [bleep] hell.
[Michael on radio]
What's happening?
Holy [bleep].
[bleep]
Yeah. What lever is it?
[Michael on radio]
[Jeff] Holy [bleep]
Oh.
Yeah, it's jammed up at the conveyor here.
We're gonna have to get a shovel in here and dig it out.
I'll come down and give you a hand.
What's happened, mate?
[Jeff] The material's jammed up, weighing the belt down,
stopping the belt from moving,
and I think that's what happened
is a big rock came out amongst a bunch of small rocks,
stopping the belt in its place.
Oh, [bleep].
Oh, man.
[Jeff] Oh, there you go.
- I'll put it on, let it go, see if it goes. - See if it goes?
- Jeff, is it all right? - Yeah, we got it. We got to it pretty quick.
Okay, go ahead, Michael, see if it turns.
See if you can bump it again?
There it goes. Right on. Look at that rock.
Watch that thing come off.
- That was a big one. - [bleep] hell.
We're lucky. I'd say we dodged a bullet.
[narrator] Back up and running,
Jeff and Parker run the last buckets of their six hour test
through the plants.
- [Dan] How's Parker doing? - Parker's doing good, mate.
He's got the swing of it. He's quite good, yeah.
We can employ him. He's quite good.
[Parker] Yeah, I'm curious to see how the gold recovery is,
and then have a more serious conversation about what our options are.
There is a fair bit of time pressure on us,
and it gets worse by the day to find a plant
and have a plan for what we're gonna do for a plant for Fairbanks,
because, and I want to be sluicing early there.
- [Louis] Copy, Parker? - Yeah, what's up?
We got to shut down the jig and do a cleanup,
and you guys can have a look.
- Oh, okay, I'll hop out. Thanks, man. - Yeah.
[Jeff] Yeah, look at that. It's so cool.
Getting jiggy with it.
[Parker] I'm curious to see how the gold recovery is.
You know, if the price is right
I would consider one of these plants
if they prove to be good gold catchers.
Either of those would suit our needs.
Is it just gonna be yellow?
- [laughs] - There must be something.
[chuckles]
[Tyler] Oh, wow.
- It's not all in the tailings? - [Louis] No, guarantee you.
You can test it.
- [Tyler] That's what we like to hear. - That's cool, innit?
That's wicked.
[narrator] With the yellow plant clean,
the team move to the red plant.
- How's she looking, Michael? - Looking pretty good.
- Yeah, you should see a bit now. - [Tyler] Oh, my [bleep]
[Dan] Oh, look.
- Yeah, that's awesome. - [Tyler] Oh, look at that.
Look at it all in there as well.
I'm literally standing on gold.
Yeah, there it is.
[Tyler] Is this your favorite part, seeing the gold?
[Michael] It makes the cleanup all worthwhile.
- You don't get tired of doing it. - Exactly.
[Parker] Testing out those two plants that we did today
was a good thing to do,
but we need to make some decisions.
Clock's ticking.
[Dan] That is a lot of buckets of gold.
[narrator] Halfway through a six hour shift loading pay...
Yeah, we're just checking in with Parker, see how he's doing.
[Dan] Mate, he's not looking the most talkative today.
I don't reckon you're gonna get an answer out of him.
[Dan] In fact, I'd be willing to bet five beers
you can't get more than five words out of him.
- Five beers? - [laughing] Yeah.
- With three questions. - You're on.
- I'm on? - [laughing] You're on.
[laughs]
[Jeff on radio] Hey, Parker, are you on here?
That's not a word. That was a thumbs up.
- [laughs] - [Jeff] How are you liking the hopper feeder?
- Oh, my God. - [Dan cackles]
[Dan] You've got one more question, Jeff.
In your own words, tell me how you like this plant.
It's all right.
- [Dan] How many words was that? - Two.
Winner. [laughs] You owe me five beers, Jeff.
Oh, yeah, this is nice. That's a nice setup.
Right.
[narrator] In the gold fields of New Zealand's west coast,
the team are pitting two wash plants against each other.
Now, Parker wants to see which one caught the most gold.
- You see there, Parker? - Oh, yeah. Not bad.
[Dan] Louis, whose just been an absolute dreamboat,
is super trusting, really nice, really helpful,
and he's letting us in his gold room.
I mean, there's not many miners
that let you just wander in their gold room
and stand right where all the gold's, like,
pouring off the end of the table and stuff like that.
[narrator] The concentrate from each plant
is passed through the gold table,
where the fine gold is separated from the black sand.
[Parker] Yes.
And there's probably a lot of that that you, like,
- can't even see until you get it in a pile. - [Louis]
[Tyler] This is great.
It makes all the hard work worth it when you see this,
- doesn't it? - Yeah.
[narrator] The gold processed, it's time to weigh the results of each six hour test.
Guys, this will be the jig.
[narrator] First up, the yellow jig plant which ran 720 yards of pay.
And you don't want the numbers on TV, right?
- No. - All right.
Okay, mate.
- We're good. So, that's yours. - Gotcha.
- Happy? - Yeah.
- [Michael] And then this one will be the red screen. - [Parker] It's gonna be...
I'll just zero it.
[narrator] Next, the red trommel which ran 960 yards of pay.
- Oh, [bleep]. - There's only a gram difference.
One gram difference.
- [Dan] Oh, wow. - Yeah, yeah, only a gram.
[bleep] You got to be happy with that.
Wow, what a great test. That's awesome.
[Dan] The one with jigs found a gram more than the one without jigs,
so that's pretty good.
[narrator] More gold and from fewer yards of pay
puts the yellow jig plant ahead in efficiency,
and on Parker's Alaskan ground could increase profits by $200,000.
[Parker] So, the big pro of the jig is definitely
- the fine gold recovery. - [Louis] Yeah.
But then on the con side it's, like, a lot of extra moving parts
and a lot of extra setup time, and...
[Louis]
[Parker] Right.
Right, get out of here. I need to talk to Louis.
- On that note, we'll go. Thank you for that. - [Dan] Thank you very much.
Feel like we're close now. Feel like we're so close.
I can literally smell it.
- So, what do we think? - I feel like it's too good to be true, almost.
This is it. I think this is our best opportunity, Jeff, innit?
Yeah, I think he's pretty happy with it.
I was happy with the results, so...
Well, I mean, which one he goes for I don't know.
I'm thinking he likes the jig, the jig plant.
- [Dan] Really? - Yeah, but who knows?
This could be the trip done. It's a pretty exciting feeling.
- [Dan] Yeah. - Mmm.
[Dan] Here he comes. Here he comes.
- So, I just had a chat with Louis and... - [Dan] And?
He's definitely limbering up.
Right? Like, things are for sale, he likes that we're here.
- Wicked. - Yeah.
- Good. - But I think we should stay here a bit more.
There's a bunch more plants that we, like, didn't even look at.
Like, him and I were spinning around in his pickup.
He's like, "Oh, yeah, there's a couple other screens there",
but we didn't even get out of our truck.
If the offer's there we should check out his...
because I'd like to see his screen decks
because I just don't know how they would deal
with this material in this ground.
- You and I both know each screen inside and out, - [Jeff] Yeah.
- but we haven't seen 'em on this kind of ground before. - No.
You guys cool with that?
[narrator] After four weeks on the road
looking at trommels to deal with the clay in his new Alaskan claim,
now Parker wants to explore an entirely different plant,
a shaker deck with screens.
There is an element of potentially being back at square one here.
Everything up until this point has been trommel-based.
You know, we're in the land of fine gold mining. They all use trommels.
They're all very successful with them, so...
I just hope we haven't opened Pandora's Box
and now everything's gonna be shaker deck based.
So, Parker's thrown a little bit of a curveball.
Time is definitely getting tight.
If Parker wants to make the mining season this year in Alaska
he's definitely gonna start having to make some decisions.
If he starts to sort of change his mind
about the way he wants to mine Alaska now
it would be quite a big U-turn.
Shall we go find a spot to set up shop?
[all] Yeah.
- [Dan] Let's do it. - All right.
[Dan] Wicked.
I don't even know what type of wash plant we're looking for.
That's why we're here.
Like, I'm approaching this with a very open mind
and no expectation, like, whether it's a trommel,
or a screen deck, or some other type of machine
that we don't even know about.
You know, we're here to hunt down the best.