Digger

"There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure." - Mark Twain At the age of nine, Max Anderson diligently dug holes in his parents' back garden hoping to strike it rich. At 36, he dug another hole for himself: he quit his job as Deputy Travel Editor of The Sunday Times to try his luck among the gold prospectors of the West Australian outback. DIGGER is the story of a foreigner arriving unannounced and ill-equipped in a mining town. Welcome to Kookynie, a town that boomed and died before the Great War began, a town whose sole heirs 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 learns the business of 'chasing the