Digger

A funny, thoughtful tale of one man's obsession with finding gold amidst the crazy miners, forgotten communities, mosquitoes and dust of the Australian outback

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Ever since he was a small boy, Max Anderson has been digging for buried treasure. From excavating his parent’s garden, to unearthing a flint arrowhead in the fields nearby, he has always sought hidden riches. And so, years later, it made perfect sense for him to travel to one of the remotest parts of Western Australia to spend a year prospecting for gold. His journey took him to Kookynie, a town of eight buildings that stand in a landscape of rubble, foundations and mining waste - the remains of a town of 3,500 which died before the Great War began. Over a period of a year, Anderson osessively sought gold in the soil and landscape around him, at the same time digging his way to the bed rock of an obsession that threatened his relationships, health and sanity. His search for gold became a search for living history; his story also that of forgotten communities and a dying breed of man: the rugged prospector whose life is inextricably linked to the land he takes from.