Episode 1 Australia with Simon Reeve

I'm on a journey around Australia.

A country the size of a continent.

This is a vast land with extraordinary wildlife.

A rich, booming country on the edge of Asia.

It's not just cricket and kangaroos!

-Thanks, ladies.

-You're welcome.

If you think you know Australia, think again.

On this first leg of my journey,

I'm travelling from the heart of the continent to the south coast

and then across the country to the capital of Western Australia.

On a vast outback ranch I join an extraordinary round-up.

Jump start, bush-style!

Give the glass a nice swirl, like that.

A legendary winemaker gives me a tasting lesson.

This is blowsy, this is...

-This is first on the dance floor!

-Yes, it is!

And I witness the effects of a water crisis

on the world's driest inhabited continent.

There are hundreds and hundreds of dead trees here.

Before joining a real-life 21st-century gold rush.

DETECTOR WHINES

-That is gold, yeah.

-Gold!

-You're onto it.

-Wahey!

Now, that is... an extraordinary view.

I'm here in the Red Centre of Australia,

standing on the magnificent Mount Conner.

And on this first part of my journey,

I head towards the west coast

and the city of Perth.

My travels around Australia will take me thousands of miles

across a country more than 30 times the size of the UK.

Australia is a vast continental landmass

that's been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years,

creating a unique and fragile environment.

Hundreds of thousands of species here exist nowhere else on earth.

But I was about to encounter a long-legged outsider.

That is not what you expect to see, eh?

Let's get out and see if we can get closer.

There's a group just coming right here.

A small herd of them.

You can see two, four, five camels right here.

But there are hundreds more in this area,

thousands more in this region

and hundreds of thousands across Australia.

Every time we trot towards them, they trot off.

Let's go the other side of these bushes.

Camels have adapted perfectly to Australia.

You could say they are a huge Australian success story.

They we're originally introduced into the country

to help with exploration

and the expansion of the rail network and the telegraph network.

Motorcars made them redundant,

and several thousand of them were released into the outback.

There is now thought to be about three quarters of a million camels

roaming wild in Australia.

They are the largest wild herd in the world.

With no natural predators, these feral camels have thrived here

and they're having a huge impact on this wilderness.

Now, this is a, erm... what you call a stock fence.

So this is running...well, it looks like kilometres in each direction,

and this is just to keep cattle in place, we're on a farm out here.

This land, although it does look and is fairly infertile,

it is farmed, they do have cattle on the land.

This keeps it in place, stops cattle, doesn't stop a camel.

Ranching out here on this dry land is a tough business.

In their search for water and food, camels cause

millions of pounds' worth of damage to farms and waterholes.

Lyndee Severin has a one million acre ranch

that's been overrun by wild camels.

Camels are our biggest management issue.

How do camels cause problems for you?

A number of ways. They do a lot of damage to infrastructure for us,

so there's a lot of damage to fences.

They do a lot of damage around water points and bores.

-In what way?

-They knock things over trying to get to the water.

So they break things.

So they break pumps, they break tanks, they break pipes.

They break fences - fences have been our biggest concern.

But Lyndee's worried about more than just damaged fences.

A million animals in this environment

do a lot of damage to the environment.

They will just take everything in the landscape

and if they destroy the trees, if they eat the grasses,

there's no kangaroos, there's no emus.

There's no small birds if there's no trees, there's no reptiles.

-A catastrophe, basically?

-Yeah.

The fundamental issue is that there are too many.

-And what...what do you do?

-We shoot them.

So we shoot the camels where we see them and we leave them.

It's not something that we enjoy doing,

but it's something that we have to do.

Camels are just one of dozens of species

that humans have introduced into Australia

which have become a major problem for this vulnerable ecosystem.

Culling feral camels is controversial.

But many farmers out here don't feel they have much choice.

I went to visit Ian Conway, who runs Kings Creek station,

another huge cattle ranch.

-ELECTRICITY BUZZES

-Oh, shucks, Jesus!

That was a bloody kick and a half!

About 600 volts. They reckon it's good for the heart

to get a bit of a kick now and again.

Rather than shooting the camels,

Ian thinks there's a better way of managing their numbers.

I was here to join a camel round-up.

You can get a bit of pressure on it.

Are they likely to rip it off, or something?

-You're going to have a helicopter blowing over the top of this.

-Right.

So everything has to be fairly secure.

To round up camels in this rough, outback terrain, Ian uses

heavily modified off-road vehicles and puts eyes in the sky.

The area they are operating in is so huge

that the chopper goes up to look for the mobs of camels,

as they call them here,

and then he's going to call in the cars

and we're going to go out and bring the camels in.

Finding a mob of camels here is no mean feat.

They range over a vast area and can travel more than 40 miles in a day.

So, Ian, what's, erm... what's happening?

We've got the helicopter coming in.

He's got a herd of camels coming in, it looks to be about 20 to 30 head,

and they'll just keep moving forwards.

So the idea is they're going to come up here,

we're going to stay quiet while they go past,

and then we get the cars in behind them.

We'll get in behind and give him a hand to push them along a little quicker than they are.

First of all, we had to get everyone up and running.

Second gear!

Jump start, bush-style!

So now we're going after the camels.

Chopper's at two o'clock.

Here, what's that dead ahead? Look.

Just ahead!

Two, four, six, eight, ten, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Maybe 25 there.

25 camels.

That is a sight. We go round the corner

and suddenly there's a whopping great camel.

We're just going to let them go until they get up close

to the yards, before we do any forcing, you know.

We'd kept the camels herded together.

Now it was time for the trickiest part of the whole round-up -

getting them into the holding pen.

-This is the key moment, isn't it?

-This is the key moment, yeah.

You're putting your seat belt on.

Yeah, my daughters insist, because I roll over quite often.

Wonderful(!)

OK, let's go, fellas.

Where are you, Alan? Where are you?

Ian has been mustering animals out here for more than 40 years.

It's difficult and dangerous.

IAN WHISTLES

Whoo! Ow, ow, ow!

He'd managed to round up 15 of the camels.

Ian was going to sell them on to the Middle East for their meat.

-They don't taste different to beef. You've eaten it, haven't you?

-Yes.

There's no difference between camel and beef.

In fact, to a lot of people who live on camel, like we do,

we prefer it to beef.

And so are all the camels that you catch and sell on sold for meat?

No, not all of them.

Quite a few of them are sold for riding camels and also for, um...

Like, the Saudis are always interested in them,

but they're looking for a specific camel.

I've got a bloke who wants beauty camels at the moment.

Like, these bulls are no good.

They like the cows because they've thin heads.

But the cows have got to have their lips hanging.

For what reason, I don't know.

It may seem harsh for these camels to be rounded up

because they're pretty or to be sold on for meat,

but few experts doubt that camel numbers need controlling.

And Ian thinks a round-up is more humane than the alternative.

They just shoot them and they lay on the ground, and that's it.

Nothing is done with them.

We don't know whether there's any system of where they might

go along and check to see if they're dead or whatever they are.

So they might lay there for a few days.

What would you like to see happen?

I'd like to see them come into a yard like this

and be sent away and sold as meat,

or riding camels or whatever else you can pull out of it.

At the moment, a lack of abattoirs means

that in many outback areas it isn't cost-effective

to round up camels and sell them for their meat.

But Ian's convinced that, with the right investment,

this can be a profitable way of protecting ranches and the environment.

I left Kings Creek in the dusty heart of the country.

The neighbouring state is South Australia.

South Australia is the driest state in the whole country.

But farmers here have managed to make the outback bloom.

These look like... Are these fruit trees?

I was travelling through an area

that produces vast quantities of fruit.

And one crop in particular has put it on the map.

Bill Hardy is the great-great-grandson

of the founder of one of the world's best-known wine brands, Hardys.

-What should I be looking for?

-OK.

If you're going to do it strictly, you should look at colour first.

Get a lovely backdrop. Look at the colour of that. Isn't it beautiful?

It's got a nice straw-yellow colour. It's not light and green yellow.

-It is a strawy yellow.

-Yeah.

-This is good language.

And when do I start getting a sense of vanilla?

-Give the glass a nice swirl like that.

-Can we try it, Bill?

-Yes.

You're allowed to put it on the palate.

Leave it there for three or four seconds.

Let it move around your mouth.

Let it warm up in your mouth and it will release more flavour.

Yeah, as something gets warmer, it releases more flavour.

HE MAKES MUFFLED SOUNDS

No, no! Swallow, swallow!

Ah. It's much better that way.

I thought you were supposed to spit it out. It's delicious.

-It is good, isn't it?

-Delicious.

-Very much an Aussie Chardonnay.

It's quite big and rich in body, quite a lot of flavour.

It's not a light, thin, aromatic wine.

'As I talked to this aristocrat of the wine world,

'I was hoping to pick up just a bit of the lingo.'

-So I know what I'm looking for now. It's a swirl.

-Yep.

-A sniff.

-And a swallow.

-It's a big wine, but it's not aggressive in any way.

-It's got a generosity to it.

-A gener...!

-Yeah.

-How do you keep this up when...?!

We talk about it being voluptuous often. This is blowsy, this is...

-This is first on the dance floor.

-Yes, it is!

This saucy little Shiraz has its roots in the region's dry land.

All of the vines here need tender care

and, of course, plenty of water.

They look in good nick.

Vines would not exist here unless you irrigated them.

A vine tends to need 600, 700mm of rain to work properly.

-So we need to irrigate.

-And that's what's going on here?

-It is.

-So you are watering tens of thousands of vines, presumably, this way?

-Yes, yes.

'These vines drink millions of gallons of water,

'which is pumped out of South Australia's main river system.'

What sort of figures, in terms of bottles,

-is your company producing each year?

-Well, the overall group these days

produces somewhere around the 20 to 25 million bottles a year.

20 to 25 million bottles? That's...

That would supply a country, wouldn't it?

HE CHUCKLES It probably would.

In fact, it supplies about 80 countries around the world.

This isn't rustic wine-making, of course.

This region is producing wine on a truly industrial scale.

Just a few miles from Hardys vineyard

is the biggest winery in the southern hemisphere.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, so a sea of tanks.

The scale of this!

So each of these tanks

can hold roughly 350,000 bottles of wine,

and they've got a thousand of them.

So, er...350 million bottles of wine at this one facility.

Of course, if you're going to put a decent bottle of wine

on a table in Britain for a few quid,

this is how you have to make it.

It has to be done industrially, and the process has to be mechanised.

Australia has changed the way the world drinks wine

with mass production, big-name brands like Hardys

and clever marketing.

Whoa!

Central to the entire wine-making process is vast quantities of water.

It's estimated that on average it takes around 500 litres

to make a single bottle of wine.

The precious resource is carefully managed here.

But this region still faces a water crisis.

For those of us who come from countries

where water does fall quite regularly from the sky,

we can very easily forget how utterly fundamental, erm...

drops, pints, gallons, gigalitres of water is

in creating and sustaining communities in a dry place like this.

If you haven't got the water, you don't have life.

And it's very easy for us all to take it for granted.

But here, it's such a precious resource.

The River Murray is the longest river in Australia,

running for more than 1,400 miles.

I was heading to meet environmental engineer Tim Stubbs,

who was taking me out on the water.

Tim?

-How are you doing?

-Doing very well, thank you.

Flipping heck, look at this!

This is a houseboat, one of the best ways to see the river

-and actually understand it. How are you doing?

-Thank you.

Get off!

Along with its major tributary, the Darling,

the River Murray forms one of the most important river basins

in the world, with a catchment area twice the size of Spain.

This is Australia's Mississippi.

It really is.

This vital agricultural region is completely dependent on fresh water from the Murray-Darling.

It's not just the wine producers that are drawing water

from these rivers, and they're by no means the thirstiest.

There are cotton farmers and even rice paddies here,

which can use more than 2,000 litres of water

to make a single kilo of rice.

Why is what has been happening here with the Murray-Darling so important?

The Murray-Darling is just a microcosm for what is happening around the world.

Our fresh water, both here and around the world, is critical

to how we are going to continue to survive as a human race

and it will be critical to geopolitics around the world.

The next great migrations, I think, will be partially based on fresh water and how we use it.

Do you mean that we have been overusing our freshwater supplies

-and just taking it for granted?

-I think we have.

There's a rule of thumb that is used in Australia that says

if you have two thirds of the natural flow in the river,

your river should be OK.

That kind of says there is a third there

that we can use for irrigation and different industry

and still have a healthy, functioning river system.

But the problem for us in Australia is we've gone too far.

Tim's research suggests that more than 60% of the natural flow

of the Murray system is now being diverted to provide water

for farms, homes and businesses.

And that's having serious consequences for some parts of this river basin.

Bloody hell.

It's devastating.

There are hundreds and hundreds of dead trees here.

This is what made people in Australia start to stop and think we need to change what we are doing.

This is an indicator of what's coming.

If we want to live here and if we want to irrigate for the next 50,

100 and 150 years, we need to get this right.

If this river system crashes

and the devastation we see here extends up and down the system,

we're not going to have a healthy river for our healthy industries,

and then we are not going to have healthy communities.

The Australian government is now regulating how much water

farmers can take out of the Murray Basin.

But critics like Tim don't think they're doing enough.

This is something that is going to be a much bigger issue in the century we're in now

than it perhaps has been in centuries past,

when there were fewer of us

and the demands on our freshwater supply were much lower.

What Australia is experiencing here now is something

that's going to start affecting many more countries

and hundreds of millions more people around the world.

BIRD SQUAWKS

I left the Murray River and headed west towards Port Lincoln,

known as the fishing capital of Australia.

This looks like a prosperous and comfortable little town.

Port Lincoln has grown rich fishing for tuna.

Before dawn the next morning, I headed to the dock to join

one of the scores of commercial fishing boats based in the town.

It's ten to six on a Wednesday morning. We're heading out to sea.

The boat took us out into the Southern Ocean

and some of the roughest waters on the planet.

The pens out here are what we are heading for,

because the guys we're with are more like farmers than fishermen.

These pens, which are anchored to the ocean floor,

are stocked with southern bluefin tuna.

Captain Ben Bartley and his crew caught the fish in the open ocean

and herded them here to these pens, where they will fatten and grow.

It's known as tuna ranching.

-How long ago were this lot caught?

-Two weeks ago, these ones.

-Right.

And they've just been transferred into these holding cages a week ago.

So you're fattening them up, basically?

Yeah. They should almost double in size in the next six months.

To monitor their progress, specialist divers

check on the fish every day, and I was going to join them.

The southern bluefin tuna can grow to more than 2m long

and weigh nearly a quarter of a tonne.

But it can still propel itself to more than 40 miles an hour.

It's a magnificent, elegant and powerful fish.

It is a weird sight.

Like being on the hard shoulder of a motorway.

They zip past you and every so often a tuna will suddenly accelerate

to super-fast speed, like a cheetah or something.

This fish is a delicacy beloved of sushi eaters,

making it the most lucrative commercial fish in the world.

When fully grown and flown off to Japan,

the fish in this pen should be worth millions of pounds.

The value we put on this creature means that, in recent decades,

bluefin tuna has been heavily over-fished from our oceans.

Tuna ranching like this allows the authorities to monitor

the catch and regulate the amount of fish caught.

Nevertheless, the southern bluefin is still classed as critically endangered in the wild.

Tuna ranching has made Port Lincoln rich

and the city is believed to have one of the highest number

of millionaires per capita in the southern hemisphere.

I went to meet one of the richest men in town.

-Afternoon.

-Good afternoon, how are you?

Hello, I'm Simon Reeve.

Welcome to my humble cottage!

Your humble cottage is quite large, Hagen.

'Hagen Stehr is a German-born fisherman who jumped ship here in 1960

'with just 3 in his pocket.'

They put me in jail for two days or three days,

and then they threw me out of jail and said, "Now do some work."

They said if you don't get drunk for six months, you've got the makings of a good Australian.

And that was 53 years ago, and I'm still here,

in the greatest country in the world.

When I arrived here, tuna fishing was just starting here in Port Lincoln

and they were catching fish with small vessels.

It was sort of dog eat dog and very fierce in the early stages.

'Fishing here developed into a huge industry.

'But Hagen now believes we can't keep emptying the seas of fish.'

The government know for the future

food security will become more and more and more relevant in years to come.

1.3 billion people in China.

Ten years ago, each Chinese person ate between 9 to 10 kilos of fish.

The latest figures coming out are saying that, in another 15 years,

that will go up to 30 kilo.

Where is it going to come from?

With wild tuna stocks collapsing around the world, Hagen has come up with a new plan.

The Holy Grail, really, for fish farmers is to be able

to breed their fish under relatively controlled circumstances.

And I'm on my way to a fairly secret facility

where they're trying to do just that.

Hagen has invested millions of pounds

in a secretive new venture.

-What is it you're doing here?

-We're developing new technology.

It's costing a lot of money to get it going,

so we try to restrict access to it, and that's why it's no windows!

Dr Craig Foster has worked at the cutting edge of the fisheries industry for 20 years.

The fish in here cost us multi-millions to get in here

and we look after them 12 months a year, 365 days, 24 hours a day,

and I don't want to take any chances in losing them.

In case you've been somewhere you shouldn't have been.

-OK.

-My goodness.

-This is our brood-stock tank.

-It's huge!

-You get a better view from up here.

They're massive. Look at the size of them!

These fish, they're about 150 kilos,

they're about as long as you and me.

The technology Craig's team are developing could mean

that, one day, wild southern bluefin tuna no longer need to be fished from our oceans.

They're trying to breed the tuna,

but it's not as easy as you might think.

This tank is all about reliably producing eggs to enable us to produce juveniles.

Why is it so hard to get them to breed in this sort of situation?

Because the reality is there is very little known about them.

These tuna are temperature spawners,

so their major breeding cycle is governed by temperature.

Naturally, they'd spawn in the Java Sea at about 27 degrees.

In the wild, tuna only breed after they migrate thousands of miles.

To recreate those conditions, this state-of-the-art facility

mimics the daylight, moonlight

and water temperatures that they'd encounter

on that epic journey around Australia to the Java Sea.

So are you businessmen, businesspeople,

or are you conservationists, or a bit of both?

Though we're not doing this as a conservation project,

there is a declining supply of tuna.

With declining supply becomes increasing prices.

So there's an opportunity to support that supply

and take the pressure off the wild fishery

by producing it in a farm manner.

Hopefully, if we can succeed,

we will take pressure off fishing stocks

and the world will go on as we would have found it years ago.

Southern bluefin tuna have been successfully spawned

at this research centre - the first time ever in captivity.

But that's only the first stage.

You probably need your glasses on for this,

-but these are tuna eggs, gold dust!

-Look at that.

Those things will grow into a fish very rapidly, hatch within 30 hours.

But if all the tuna in here were to grow to full size

and be sold on to a market in Japan, let's say,

that could be £200-300,000 of fish.

Correct. And I'd be a happy person.

If they can raise tuna to full size,

they may be able to change how we fish our oceans

and help save the southern bluefin tuna.

Of course, it is sad to see such magnificent creatures

being held captive like this and farmed.

But we've been doing the same to cattle for thousands of years.

And at the moment the human population of the planet

is increasing by tens of millions every year.

We're emptying our oceans of fish.

Maybe fish farming, aquaculture, can play a role in finding

a solution which feeds humans, but protects life in our seas.

The sun's going down,

and we've got another couple of hours of driving to do

before we going to get to Port Augusta,

which is our next destination,

and there we're supposed to be hopping on a train

which is going to take us west.

But it's going to be quite tight,

and the problem with this train is it only goes once a week.

The town of Port Augusta was a quick drive by Australian standards -

just 140 miles further along the coast.

It's ten o'clock now.

The train comes in soon.

The train station, I can see, is over there.

The Pichi Richi Railway Station.

OK. I'll stop here.

I'm really looking forward to this, I love travelling by train.

And to be honest, Australia was pretty much designed for it,

being utterly vast and having roads that never seem to end.

Thank you.

We're just going to lock the doors and we'll be on our way. Thank you.

Oh, wow.

-Bathroom's in there. It's pretty easy to work out.

-The bathroom, yeah.

You've got your towels and stuff here.

-It's rather flashy, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

-This is much better than driving. OK.

-Just a little.

-Thank you.

Breakfast runs from 6:30 to 8:30.

-Keep going till I can smell bacon, basically!

-Yeah!

-OK. Thank you.

No worries.

HE EXHALES DEEPLY

Oh, lovely, lovely.

Sleep well.

The Indian Pacific Railway runs all the way across Australia

from coast to coast.

It's an astonishing 2,700 miles -

further than a journey from London to Baghdad.

"Available till 8:30 this morning, breakfast from the Queen Adelaide restaurant car."

It's one of the world's greatest train journeys

and carries 60,000 people a year.

So we are now at the start of the Nullarbor Plain,

a vast area of flat nothingness in some ways,

but starkly beautiful in its own right.

The world's longest straight stretch of railway track took me

across the Nullarbor Plain and into the state of Western Australia,

where I hopped off the train at the city of Kalgoorlie.

In the late 1800s, three Irishmen, who stopped here to shoe a horse,

found gold nuggets lying on the ground.

So began one of the largest gold rushes in history.

Thousands flooded into this remote region to make their fortune.

When gold prices rocketed after the recent global financial crisis,

a new gold rush began.

Look.

-Hey, guys.

-Hello, Ted? Simon, Simon Reeve.

-Pleased to meet you, mate.

'Ted Mahoney is one of the biggest gold dealers in town.'

Are people still coming in from outside the area,

-are people coming here drawn by the obvious ancient lure of gold?

-Oh, mate...

Gold prices are very high, which draws a lot of people.

And you're buying gold from people who are prospecting

-just in this area?

-Every day. That's what our shop runs on.

That's all we do, is just buy gold.

'And some of the locals are striking it rich.'

-Simon, hello.

-Hello.

-Can we see what you've brought in?

-Yes, certainly.

-Look at this!

-That's probably about a kilo of raw gold.

At today's prices, a kilo of pure gold is worth around £30,000.

-I told you it was a kilo.

-Yeah, 18 grams out.

-They say the streets are covered with...

-SIMON LAUGHS LOUDLY

Congratulations on this.

You're very calm about it.

-You should take some time off now.

-No, I don't like taking time off.

-Thank you so much. Best of luck. Cheers.

-We'll see you again, eh?

Hopefully. He's still going to be out there getting more.

-Yeah.

-One kilo is not enough.

-Last year, the year before, we had a 24 kilo nugget come in.

-A 24 kilo nugget.

-They're still out there.

-Yeah. Found by a guy with a metal detector, mate!

He thought it was a tin can, dug it out and there was gold. Oh!

They're drawn by the lure of gold because people are still finding gold.

It is a very sort of fundamental human desire, isn't it?

It is so attractive and shiny!

-You live with this all the time.

-That's gold fever. That's gold fever.

With 24 kilo nuggets still being found, I headed straight for the hills.

I was meeting a family who've moved to Kalgoorlie to seek their fortune.

Now, where are they?

-Steve?

-How are you?

-Rowanne?

-Morning.

Morning, morning, morning. Simon.

It's a lovely morning after the rain. SIMON LAUGHS

-Hello. Hello, my dear. Hello! Who are you?

-Teela.

-Teela.

-She's got the spade. It's a family affair.

-It is.

METAL DETECTOR WHISTLES

Steve Smith and his wife Rowanne try to get out here every weekend

with their metal detectors,

and they've had their fair share of luck.

What's this here?

-A gold nugget Steve found.

-He found that?

That is the sort of thing that is out here...under the ground.

METAL DETECTOR WHISTLES

-My chance... My bit now.

-This is your part of fame.

Just loosen the ground up around where you think it is.

There could be gold right here.

There could be. Get in with your hand.

-Nothing in that.

-There you go, there's something there.

DETECTOR BEEPS QUICKEN

-What's that?

-It looks like a bit of an old lead shot.

MUTED WHISTLING

-Another lovely bit of rubbish, an old bullet, an old .22.

-That really is. Look.

When the gold rush really started here,

it was really like the Wild West, and robbers would shoot anybody

if they had gold or they knew where it was as well.

I suppose knowing where the gold was

was almost as valuable as having it in the first place.

Yep, yep.

So information and knowledge became very precious, didn't?

Even now, you're keen for us not to show your car numberplates or precisely where we are.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Completely understandably.

Prospecting is a serious business.

But Steve was happy to let me have a go.

-HIGH-PITCHED WHISTLES

-Ooh!

-Your gold ring!

-My gold ring I realised as I did it, idiot!

STEVE LAUGHS

On that occasion, it's just this tiny bit of metal.

But on other times, it could be gold.

After an hour of searching, I failed miserably.

'But Steve kept my hopes alive with a small pile of quartz.'

I've got a few bits here. We can take it home

and get you to crush it up.

'He said it might contain gold.'

Hey, hey, hey.

That's it.

Have you ever done any panning?

-You know, strangely, no!

-You haven't?

-No.

Basically, we're just going to drop it in. Just agitate it.

Try and work the gold back down to the bottom,

because your gold is obviously heavier.

It will be down in this bottom riffle

and then just going to work it around,

try and work it back to this corner into the middle of the riffles.

And then what you're doing is just washing and a nice little light wash.

Like that. There you go. Look, look! There is gold in it.

-Wahey!

-There is, too. Sensational.

-There you go. That is gold, yeah.

-Gold!

-You're onto it.

Although it's not big, this weight accumulates up.

And then you take it down to the gold shop and sell it on.

And we go on holidays. BOTH LAUGH

Yeah!

-So this is your brew?

-This is my brew.

-Steve, thank you very much indeed for showing it to us.

-And thank you.

-And best of luck with your future prospecting.

-Cheers.

Down the hatch.

-Steve, that's good.

-That is good, isn't it?

-Whoo-ah!

STEVE LAUGHS

Whoo-hoo!

It is not just part-time prospectors like Steve who are making money

from the Kalgoorlie gold rush.

This is the site of one of the world's biggest goldmines.

Kalgoorlie lies on what local say is the richest square mile on earth.

Across Australia,

vast mines like this are fuelling an unprecedented resources boom.

Flipping heck.

More than two miles long and one third of a mile deep,

the Kalgoorlie Super Pit can be seen from space.

When you start looking at the dumpers over there, I think you get an idea.

Each one of the massive trucks

can haul 225 tonnes of rock out of the pit.

The mine operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

producing 7% of the world's gold.

I'm suddenly really just taken by this roundabout we're on.

There is a sign here that says Tropicana gold mine that way.

And then there is a sign here that says nickel mine that way,

silver mine that way.

HE LAUGHS

This land is just peppered with resources

and just incredible wealth.

But that wealth didn't seem to be trickling down to everyone around here.

Just a stone's throw from the super pit,

this is an Aboriginal settlement called Ninga Mia.

Like many across the country,

it suffers from high unemployment, crime and addiction.

This is...such a dark aspect of Australia.

The pitiful suffering of Aboriginal people.

We are just a short distance from one of the most valuable patches of land on planet earth

and here, at the edge of this Aboriginal settlement, there is rubbish everywhere.

And there are these cars that have almost been annihilated.

It's as if people have taken out their anger on them.

Across Australia, large deposits of valuable minerals have been found

on traditional Aboriginal lands.

In many cases, those Aboriginal communities have been paid for the right to mine the land.

But the money has often done little to improve lives.

Many people here in Ninga Mia don't feel they are benefiting

from the gold that's being mined out of land they believe belongs to them.

As a result, there is upset and anger.

I met with Pastor Geoffrey Stokes, a local community leader.

Can you tell us a little bit about this community. Where are we?

The original reserves for Kalgoorlie and Boulder were just back over there.

And they moved the people from there to here.

That is the Kalgoorlie Super Pit.

They get millions of dollars every day out of this.

And, um...we don't get nothing, not a cent from it.

Nothing. Everybody else is benefiting.

It's 200 years since Europeans arrived, took this land

and subjugated Aboriginal people.

In recent decades, there have been committees, commissions,

compensation.

But in many Aboriginal communities,

there's still suffering and resentment.

The rest of Australian seems to be getting on with its happy lives,

and its barbecues and its beaches and its resource boom.

I come here and you start to see the other side of life here.

For them to have their lifestyle

and their jobs and their trucks and boats and planes

and all the rest of it, someone had to pay for it.

-Who's paying for it here?

-The Aboriginal people.

-I'm paying for their lifestyle.

-In what way?

Because I'm missing out on my inheritance and my birthright

and my wealth

-and the benefits that come out of the country.

-Out of the ground?

-Out of the ground.

-Yeah.

We're still living in Third World conditions.

HE EXHALES HEAVILY

There is a huge gulf

between the lives of most Aboriginal people in this country

and other Australians.

Australians, most Australians, I think, they do,

of course, care about what is happening in communities like this,

and it would be completely wrong for anyone to suggest or imagine

that the government isn't trying to help.

But make no mistake, this is a hugely challenging situation

and there are no quick fixes and definitely no easy answers.

The plight and problems of Aboriginal communities

was something I'd encounter and explore in more detail

later on my journey around Australia.

I drove nearly 400 miles west of Kalgoorlie

to the coastal city of Perth, the capital of Western Australia.

Money from Australia's resources boom is pouring into this city.

So this is Perth.

It's one of the fastest-growing cities in Australia

and, to be honest, it feels more like a capital city

than the capital of just a state in the country.

Average household incomes here have risen 35% in just five years.

There's no recession here.

The unemployment rate is less than half of what it is in Europe,

attracting workers from across the globe,

including Brits in their droves.

More than 11% of Perth's population are British expats.

I headed off to meet one of them.

I think this is it.

They're busy!

I'll just park here, I think.

This is just one of hundreds of truck-driving schools in Australia.

Thousands of men and women come here every year to get their heavy-goods licence,

so they can go off and work on remote mining projects

and earn a fortune.

The success of this driving school, and the fact that so many people

want to be truck drivers, is largely down to the resources boom here.

In Australia, you don't just need to be a stockbroker

or a banker to have a high income.

You can be a blue-collar worker and still make a lot of money.

Steve Mutch left his job as a binman in Hull when the recession hit.

He's now a truck-driving instructor.

-Steve.

-Hello.

-Hello, mate.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you, too.

I do about ten lessons a day. I have 50 lessons a week on average.

-You've got that many pupils coming through here?

-Yeah.

-It's very busy, very busy.

-Are you ready for another one?

-I am.

HE LAUGHS

Right. It's like a plane, quite frankly.

-Flipping heck, how many gears has this got?

-This one's got 18 gears.

-18?

-18 forward gears, yeah.

And it's two clutches for every gear change.

Clutch, neutral, clutch, gear, tap-tap, that sort of speed.

If I make it into second, I will consider that a major achievement.

If I change gears without destroying the gearbox,

-I'll be very happy.

-So will I.

BOTH LAUGH

How reassuring. Thank you, Steve!

'Steve took me out onto the open road to show me how it's done.'

OK, so once your revs are about 1,250 revs,

you go into neutral. So it's neutral, off the clutch, back on.

Right.

When it goes to 12½, it's clutch, neutral, clutch, gear.

Stop doing everything so quickly! How am I supposed to...?!

Suddenly, it was my turn.

I was taking charge of a vehicle called a prime mover -

a truck capable of pulling more than 40 tonnes -

if I could get it started.

Flipping heck.

Don't rev to start with. You press your foot all the way to the floor on the clutch.

Give the gearbox chance to stop spinning.

You don't need to accelerate at first.

Oh, goodness, we're moving!

That's it. Now gently accelerate.

Strewth! What am I doing?

Clutch to the right.

It will pop into neutral. It's off the clutch back on and into two.

-That's it.

-I just changed gear. We're in second gear now.

It was a little bit jumpy, I'll grant you that.

That's that kangaroo fuel they put in them!

-CLANGING SOUND

-Oh, God!

We'll pick them bits of the gearbox back up when we come back round!

-Steve, I'm sorry.

-STEVE LAUGHS

Really slow, yep.

Steve, have you got a seat belt on?

I have, yes. And I've had my Valium(!)

-Had your Valium!

-STEVE CHUCKLES

-We're doing 38 kilometres an hour.

-Start pulling back on that gear stick a little.

Into neutral, release the clutch, back on the...

GEARS GRIND Oof!

Why's it doing that?!

Steve, this can't be less stressful than working for the council in Hull.

That's why they pay us so well. SIMON LAUGHS LOUDLY

Danger money.

Come on now, Steve, you're getting good money here.

-Are you going to tell us what you're earning? Roughly.

-Roughly.

-I will probably earn 90,000 a year.

-90,000 a year.

£60,000 a year.

Before tax.

'Many of Steve's pupils go on to work in Australia's mines,

'earning even more than he does.'

I was talking to a driver the other day,

he's earning 4,000 a week after tax.

4,000 a week, 200,000 a year. That's 130,000...

If we start to slow down again.

Yep. £130,000, eh? Just for driving a truck.

You'd probably pay your house off after one year.

-It's quite a draw for people, isn't it?

-Oh, yes.

Neutral, big rev, clutch and into gear. That's it.

Indicate to your right. Good.

And we'll turn in the yard in this gear.

-You want me to reverse between those two trucks there?

-Yes.

-Is that all right?

-Look in that bottom mirror.

You're very close to the yellow one.

And stop there. Good. You did well.

-Yay! Thank you so much.

-You're welcome.

You're very calm and reassuring.

Phew!

'Steve lives in a large house with a pool in the suburbs of Perth

'with his wife Sharon, a nurse, and his daughter Jess.'

Hello! Hello! Simon.

-Hello.

-Sharon.

-Hello, Sharon, lovely to meet you. Hello. Hello.

-Jess.

-Lovely to meet you. Simon. How are you?

-Good, thanks.

-Have you cleaned up because you knew we were coming?

-Yes.

-All day I've been cleaning!

-Oh, no!

It was always a dream to get the boat

and it's great just to be able to take that out on the weekend.

Was there a point when you were in Hull and you heard that your salary

was going to be more than halved

and you just were pulling your hair out slightly,

wondering what you were going to do?

Well, I suppose after being in a job for so long,

cos I worked there for 22½ years, it's a bit of a worry.

And you come out here...

I was expecting to have a few weeks off.

The first job I applied for I was offered.

-But you must be pleased with how things have turned out?

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

-No, it's great. Like I say, we're living the dream.

-It does feel like that.

It is, yeah. You'd never have this back home in England.

You couldn't use a boat like that on the River Humber.

HE LAUGHS

Blue-collar workers like Steve are making a good living

on the back of Australia's resources boom.

To understand the scale of what is going on, I headed to Perth Airport.

From here, thousands of workers

head off to the mines of Western Australia every day.

It is known as "fly in, fly out" or FIFO.

So all the planes over here, these planes here

and this lot over here, these are all for the FIFO workers.

165 planes a day are shuttling people back and forwards

to remote mining sites and drilling sites.

So long as the giant economies of Asia keep growing, Australia

will keep supplying them with iron, coal, copper, oil and gas.

And people here will continue to cash in.

I think basically everybody here is FIFO. It's extraordinary.

It's like watching commuters in a London Underground station,

except here, they're all flying out.

-Where are you off to yourselves?

-West Angeles.

-West Angeles?

And that's iron ore. You're iron-ore men?

There's about 20 of us on this plane going up today for five days.

Your accent's not local, is it?

-40 years ago, I used to live in Sheffield.

-So what's your rotation?

-You never know, or...?

-Yeah.

Because we're senior citizens, they sort of...

They have us for a week

and then we might not get a call for another three weeks,

or four weeks, and then they want us for another four of five days.

Do you remember that English phrase "cushy"?

-Yeah. Dead cushy.

-It sounds a bit cushy.

It's real cushy. Because after that you can come out to Perth,

cut the grass in the garden, go fishing and look after grandkids.

-It's great.

-It's a hard life, but someone's got to do it!

Too right!

So they're heading off on their commute.

This is the end of this part of my journey.

On the next programme, I'll be travelling

across the north of Australia to the Great Barrier Reef.

Next time, in Australia's tropical north,

I go on patrol with a unique military force.

-Green ant tea?

-Green ant tea, yeah.

And I'll find out how modern Australia is threatening

the greatest coral reef in the world.

Really like something from a sci-fi film.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd