Project Description
Aussie Gold Hunters
TV documentary series
Season One: 8 x 44 minutes
Season Two: 10 x 44 minutes
Season Three: 13 x 44 minutes
In Aussie Gold Hunters we join hard-core teams of gold prospectors as they take the gamble of a lifetime and battle to strike it rich, deep in the wild west of outback Australia. Share the soaring highs and crushing lows of the gold season as our teams pursue their all-important targets braving brutal heat, punishing conditions, mechanical breakdowns and constant pressure.
Just ask husband and wife team the ‘Gold Gypsies’. Six years ago Christine and Greg Clark walked away from their Brisbane home and construction careers to chase their dream of striking it big – 4000 km away in the West Australian Goldfields. Having spent their life savings to set up their mining operation, the self-taught prospectors’ future rests on gold, for better or for worse…
Thinking big are Vern Strange and Leon Marsh, aka ‘The Dirt Dogs’. These best mates have sunk a million dollars into their heavyweight mining operation. Its centrepiece is the Dogs’ 45-ton dry blowing plant ‘Goldzilla’, hand built to extract precious ounces of gold from hundreds of tons of raw dirt. Having ploughed one fortune into their season plan, the Dogs are under massive pressure to unearth another, just to break even…
Meanwhile, remote prospectors Kellie Carter and Henri Chassaing go it alone. Armed with their high tech detectors, the best friends seek their fortune out in the farthest depths of the wild outback – where rival prospectors fear to tread. It’s a high risk, high reward plan far off the map, and hundreds of kilometres from help. But for Henri and Kellie it’s the only way to reach the precious undiscovered gold patches that could be hiding the ultimate reward.
Solo prospector, Rick Fishers, lives and works alone for six months of the year amidst the isolation of the deep outback with just his 20 year old transit van for company. But despite enduring threatening dangers, punishing conditions, and the pain of leaving family 2000 km away, the lone wolf is a one-man gold machine.
The hard working Mahoney family have seen it all, and done it all in the gold game – winning and losing fortunes along the way. Childhood sweethearts, Ted and Lecky , joined by their daughter Tyler, begin each season seeking high rewards to keep them going at a lifestyle they love.
The Scrappers team is led by Cornwall born and raised Alex Stead who became entranced with gold as a child, and has spent the last decade venturing from the UK to Western Australia to prospect. He’s put together a small team, including his father-in-law, Eric Richards, and veteran prospector, Rod Bell, who together build a wash plant in the dry outback to separate the dirt from the gold.
Series Producers Roger Power, Robin Shingleton
Directors Tim Green, Claire Leeman, Stuart O’Rourke, Cian O’Clery, Justin St.Clair Lewis, Brad Cone, Steven Geddes, Wayne Young
Series DOP Riaan Laubscher
Editors David Fosdick ASE, Simon Hill, Robin Lloyd, Bill Turner, Derek Jones, Matthew Clifton, Lynette Shingleton, Annie Storer, Shannon Cegielski, Emma Copeland
Executive Producers Andrew Ogilvie & Andrea Quesnelle
An Electric Pictures Production 2016, 2017, 2018
