Digger

by Max Anderson (Author)

• Used

  Unabridged
  2004

  $3.27

  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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $12.08

  Digger is the story of a foreigner arriving unannounced and ill-equipped in a mining town that boomed and died before the Great War began, a town whose sole remnants are eight buildings, 13 people and a pub. All around is ruin, mining waste, waterless scrub ...and the world's purest gold. Anderson spins a break-neck account of adventure and adversity as he tries to join the remarkable band of men who detect metal for a living. Ex-truckie Ron snarls about bastard, gold-filching tourists; veteran treasure hunter Lazy Les drawls bar-room advice while strumming air guitar with AC/DC; and pub owner Kevin quietly surveys all through a haze of cigarillo smoke. Digging between the abandoned shafts, Anderson unearths superstitions and secrets, as well as stories of the original desert diggers who struck as much misery as they did gold. But ultimately he dips deep into a small town's psyche and risking his relationship and his self-respect down to the bedrock of an age-old obsession.