Desperado Pt. I

When all else fails, you go west. When you can't get a job. When your lover leaves you. When you're running your past. When you can't find a home. Go west. Not unlike America, Australia developed from the east to the west. The frontier land is less fertile, less livable, and less welcoming; but coupled with these challenges are freedom and opportunity. Kalgoorlie attracts people seeking these things like bush flies towards the setting sun.

Jake has nothing but some sort of social service check to keep him going. $240 a month. He has nothing but a beat up car, a trailer, and a used SR-400 metal detector. He has named them Lucy, Marie, and Jody, respectively. "They are my family and I look after them," he says. He has landed a job as a caretaker on a startup prospector's plot. He looks after the equipment-and in return he gets to metal detect on the surface for missed alluvial gold. If he could just find a nugget he could turn his life around...maybe give it to his estranged wife or buy an extra tire for his car. He might be the happiest person I have met. He sings "My Way" like a gruff Aussie Frank Sinatra while setting up the bush camp he'll live in for the next two weeks, probably 50km from the nearest person. As I leave Jake...and Lucy, Marie, and Jody he shouts "Enjoy life, mate!" I can see him waving in the rear view mirror until he dNaisappears behind a cloud of fine red dirt.