Deals done beyond the big tent

DIGGERS AND DEALERS: In During a short cab ride The Roadhouse discovered not all the deals at Diggers & Dealers are done under the big marquee.

Half way to my destination my driver opened the centre console, pulled out a small black box and said, “Have a look at that.”

He had handed me, with no great fanfare or fuss, a small gold nugget with a price tag on it of $3700.

My man’s name is Roy Turner and besides driving taxis he also runs a gold shop in Kalgoorlie’s sister city of Boulder.

“We do a bit of processing work for small miners,” he explained.

“If they want their quartz specimen smashed up and the gold got out of, we do that.

“We also make a bit of jewellery for different ones.”

 

Some of Roy’s handy work

I asked him to clarify that when he said ‘small miners’ he didn’t mean small mining companies and that he meant local prospectors.

As he confirmed this I asked if prospecting was a bit of cottage industry around Kalgoorlie?

“It’s quite a large industry actually,” he said.

“You don’t realise how many people there are out there actually doing it.

“They come from everywhere. From over east, America, even France. I’ve run into all nationalities at different times.”

It would seem that people still flock to the gold mining region surrounding Kalgoorlie with the idea of prospecting firmly set in their mind.

“Not only Kalgoorlie the entire Goldfields area,” Roy continued.

“There is gold all through the west. It is sort of one of the last frontiers, really.

“I carry a bit of gold with me as I drive around to show different people.

“I usually tend to get a couple of good sales.”

It would make sense that if somebody wanted to take home a souvenir of their time in Kal, it may as well be a genuine locally-sourced nugget.

Roy said there are usually a couple of Diggers delegates keen on taking a few nuggets home with them.

“Last year I was driving a bloke to the airport,” he recalled.

“We were about a minute away from the airport and I showed him this piece of gold and he said, ‘I want it.’

“I asked him how he was going to pay for it and he said he only had $200 on him.

“I said, ‘Give me that, you can put the rest of the money in my account and we’ll post it off to you’.

“We did the deal within about two minutes.”

I didn’t become one of Roy’s customers, but I’m sure by the end of the week his cab will be travelling a lot lighter.