Aussie man mining for gold to afford new car
Updated . First published at
One young Aussie dad is turning back the clock in a bid to provide for his family - and now he’s willing to share nuggets of information.
Rob Parsons has been mining for gold in the Tasmanian wilderness, with his eye on a brand-new car when he’s dug up enough to fund it.
Rob Parsons is hoping to mine $75,000 in gold for his dream vehicle. Today
“I’ve been doing it for about six years now, I first saw a guy online over in British Columbia using a new method of finding gold, where you wear a snorkel and a wetsuit and you’re actually looking underneath the water in the bedrock cracks,” Rob told Today.
“So it’s quite a new age type way of getting gold and it’s something that the old timers back in the day didn’t have the luxury of.”
Gold-mining is a little different from working an extra job or selling used goods, but Rob did warn it requires a lot of patience - from both the miner and his family.
“I have found a few good nuggets, like my largest one is 10 grams, so that’s about $2000,” he said.
“But, there are no multi-kilogram ones down here in Tassie, it’s all kind of smaller stuff - But I’ve done pretty well at the game over the years.”
Rob said the biggest nugget ever found in Tasmania was 7.5 kilograms and that was by a man named James McGinty back in 1883.
But the largest recorded gold nugget find in Australia is the Welcome Stranger, which weighed an impressive 72 kilograms when measured and was located by miners John Deason and Richard Oates in Bulldog Gully, near Moliagul in Victoria, back in 1869.
The pair took it to the bank and received £10,000, which they split between them.
That would equate to around AU$2.9 million in today’s economy.
But Rob’s not greedy and would be happy with around $75,000 to be able to buy a new 4WD for his wife and kids.
“I’m just kind of on a bit of a mission now to see what I can do to drum up a new vehicle for the family,” he said.
“Since I’ve been recording the series, I think I’m up to about $16-17,000, but over the years I’m not too sure - I’ve never actually tallied it up.”
Rob did warn though, for anyone who wants to give prospecting a go, there is a lot more effort which goes into preparing an expedition than what you see in the videos he posts on social media.
“I’ve got two young kids and a wife, so the most I can get out is one or two nights at a time every month or so,” he said.
“It takes a lot of research, a lot of preparation, it takes a lot of driving and a lot of hiking to get into these places.
“And it takes a hell of a lot of energy to extract the gold from the creek, so it’s not as easy as it looks on the videos.”
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