We have a neighbor. He approached me a few weeks ago and wanted to sell his property, and I’ve been in discussions with him about buying him out. And uh, I just signed the deal today.

Seriously?

Yeah. You bought Gold Run?

Three miles of Gold Run that butts up to our property, and a mile of ground on Sulfur.

Did you buy just the dirt, or like buy the whole thing out?

Whole company. Purchase price: 25 million. From a cash basis, it does put the screws to us a bit, but I’ve embraced the debt. You can always go bankrupt.

I know, Mitch, I mean, that’s a lot of money. But with our production, I think that it’s going to pay for itself.

Do we have the manpower to pick up all this extra stuff?

We’re stretched pretty thin as it is.

Yeah, we are stretched thin. But they have a pit stripped on Sulfur that’s ready to go. We’re going to run out of ground on the Indian River, right? So that crew that’s down there — they can bounce Bob over there and sluice these pits out.

I really don’t like having neighbors. Could have just built a fence probably for a lot cheaper.

Well, that’s not what I was expecting to hear, but congratulations.

With this latest addition, Parker’s reign has stretched to an almighty empire at Indian River. Parker’s skeleton crew have almost completed eight acres of ground leased from Kent Tatlo and Stuart Schmid on Parker’s Dominion claim.

He has his team mining 20 acres at the Long Cut and 114 at the Bridge Cut next door. As of today, Parker’s new 1,100-acre property at Gold Run, while 10 miles away sits the 950 acres of Sulfur, with its one cut already stripped, ready to be sluiced. All told, Parker’s kingdom now spans a mammoth 9,550 acres of gold-rich ground — amounting to a colossal fortune.

The 25 million move to Sulfur Creek is Parker’s longest ever plant move.

We don’t have any replacements for any of this stuff. If we damage one part of this wash plant, the whole day is a bust. If Sulfur is a bust, the whole plan is done.

That’s good there, guys. Give me a hand with this feeder. You be my eyes while I lift it up. Back her in, let’s do it.

Getting a lot closer to sluicing. We might have her going for night shift.

I think we do have a night shift lined up. Let me just hop up in the plant and see where we’re lined up there. Feed—

Oh no. Oh, that’s really bad. This bar, it’s shattered. It’s the front lip of the plant, keeps the dirt on the shaker. If we were running this, the crack would continue. This whole chute would be blown out of the plant, and we’d have a pile up. That’s quite a big job to get something proper in there. Might not be sluicing tonight after all. Our plant’s down. This is the last thing we need. We need Bob up and running — and it’s down because of the feed lip.

Desperate to sluice and itching to know whether the ground is still producing, mechanics Alec Kelly and Liam Puka race to fix the broken feed lip.

We’re going to reinforce it. The whole chute is held quite strongly on the sides, and there’s no support here. And the whole time the shaker is running, this oscillates a little, to the point where it shatters and disassembles itself violently from the wash plant. The success of this day is now solely dependent on us.

While the mechanics reinforce Bob’s feed lip, Tyson and Damen Brown stockpile even more pay from Sulfur’s pre-stripped cut.

We’re already stretched so bloody thin right now. What Parker’s idea was, going and buying another piece of property, I really don’t know.

We got the new chute all welded up. Now the real fun begins — to see how we’re actually going to get the new one in, and how it’s even going to fit.

I’m clear, this makes it easy.

Yeah, now we’re just unbolting.

Good, Alec. This is looking pretty good here. So we got our chute up in place. Line up our holes, throw some bolts in, we’re out of here.

Perfect. Well, nice work, guys. Got her back together. We’ll be ready to fire up. I’ll go let Damien know.

Sounds good. You want to grab the pump, Alec? I’ll do it, thanks.

Just two days after Parker’s sudden purchase of Sulfur Creek—here we go—washplant Bob fires up for the first time on its new ground.

The first pocket of pay. You know, you asked me at the beginning of the season if we’d be here on Sulfur Creek, I’d say you’re crazy. But it’s just the cards we’ve been dealt. Hopefully there’s a big pile of gold at the end of the week for us.

Here, I think we have to have a talk about your spending practices.

You’re buying a lot of… oh, I know. How much have you spent on property the last two years?

Right, yeah. Too much. I don’t want to think about it.

Parker has gold coming from four spots this week. First up is the gold from the Long Cut on Dominion, averaging so far 150 ounces a week.

This Long Cut: 20, 30, 70, 140, 200, 210… 227.7. Nice. That’s solid. Not bad.

Okay, there’s Big Red. To date, the Bridge Cut has yet to hit 100 ounces in a week. Here we go. Big Red, Bridge Cut: 5, 10, 25, 55, 60, 70… 77.1. Consistently poor.

Last cleanup down at Ken and Stewart’s has been their best performing cut this season, delivering 2 ounces of gold an hour. 30, 65, 70, 98.8. Over 2.5 ounces an hour on its last run of the season. But for the hours it ran, I think it did well.

Well, it’s a good thing you got Sulfur, because without that, where would Bob have gone? What do you think, you liking your new purchase?

I don’t know, Chris. Do we like our new purchase? For it to pick up the slack, Parker’s looking for Sulfur to deliver at least 100 ounces in just two days of running Bob.

Sulfur. All righty, let’s see how Parker’s new purchase pans out. Got to go. Here we go. 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 110, 120… 130, 141.5.

Sulfur has produced nearly double the gold the Bridge Cut made all week. So far, so good. It’s a good week for Bob, with a move in the middle.

Well, at least there’s some gold over at Sulfur. And you guys keep doubting me. Halfway to doing some gold down there.

Add them all up — that’s a pretty good week. So for the week, we have 535.1 ounces.

Forty-eight more than half the purchase price of his new ground. Better than a kick in the ass.