Prospect of riches the old, eternal lure

It would be hard to argue that any prospector believes in the concept of luck more so than Daniele Specogna.

Four years ago, aged 62, Mr Specogna said goodbye to the earth as he lay in a creek bed waiting for death.

The Marble Bar man had been out prospecting for gold, when he ran out of water.

Dehydrated and too far from home or his car, Mr Specogna decided his only option was to send a signal and to wait for help.

He set fire to the land and burrowed himself deep down in the creek bed.

He lay in that same spot for two days and one long night, coming to peace by saying his goodbyes to the world, to his two daughters, and to his home country Italy.

It’s an uncomfortable memory for Mr Specogna to recollect, and one that makes him visibly emotional.

“It’s a strange experience,” he said. “It was surreal, I was prepared to go.”

Mr Specogna is just one of the many Marble Bar locals who regularly make their way deep into the Pilbara outback, digging into the rich, red dirt with a pick-axe in the hope of finding gold.

As the familiar sound of a metal detector cries out, many quite literally strike the precious commodity.

Some come across small nuggets no bigger than a couple of grams.

Others, however, are lucky enough to make a life-changing find; a specimen as big as your hand could be worth more than $50,000.

A specimen literally worth its weight in gold.

The finds, and the location of them, however, are among the most highly guarded secrets in the small town.

People quite literally cover their tracks to avoid being followed, and that in itself creates a danger for prospectors.

For Lang Coppin, whose name is synonymous with the Pilbara, prospecting is no small operation.

He’s not just out there looking for the nuggets; he has his eyes set on much larger prizes, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to find them.

It’s with the help of his R44 helicopter that Mr Coppin and his associates strike gold.

“This town is sitting on a bloody goldmine,” he said.

“By far the biggest mineral at the end of the day is gold — and it’s always everybody’s favourite.”

Mr Coppin said at one point earlier this year, he believed there were about 200 people out prospecting within a 100km radius of Marble Bar.

A total of 342 prospecting licenses have been issued in the Marble Bar area in the past five years and, according to the Department of Mines and Petroleum, overall the number of prospecting licences applied for in the Pilbara have remained fairly constant, apart from a slight increase in 2014-15. “You fly around and there’s people camping everywhere,” Mr Coppin said from his home which overlooks the small town which was established in the 1980s due to the discovery of gold.

Not only is Mr Coppin trying his luck in the search for gold, he’s also dipping his toes into the lithium market.

Together with a private prospectors’ syndicate, Mr Coppin recently signed an option agreement with Blaze International to start the first phase of drilling on a deposit near town.

It’s a market few are yet to enter as the world watches on quietly to see how serious the commodity could become.

The deposit, Mr Coppin said, is the first outside of Pilbara Minerals’ Pilgangoora Lithium-Tantalum Project to be drilled and explored.

“Marble Bar is rich in minerals,” he said.

“Right at the moment there’s a lot of activity around lithium.”

Not only that, but base metals including copper, lead, and zinc surround Marble Bar, with the oldest copper-lead-zinc deposits in the world found at Lennon’s Find about 60km south-east of the town.

Barite was also mined some 50km west of Marble Bar, but operations ceased about 20 years ago.

For Mr Specogna, the search for gold is not about the money, but more about the small gifts the earth gives him.

While that may be viewed as an empty statement by many, the soft-speaking Mr Specogna’s humble home in the centre of Marble Bar suggests he really means it.

“I’m not a greedy person, I don’t work for money anymore,” the prospector and hobby jeweller said.

“I worked for money enough in life ... I don’t sell my time any more.

“I’m lucky, you see ... and that’s it, more or less.”

And anyone who hears the story of how he was found, so dehydrated, that fateful day in 2012, would believe him.

“I was prepared to go in a way,” he said.

“But there was no tension, alarm or desperation ... not at all.”

When asked whether he believed someone was watching over him, Mr Specogna recalls there was someone watching over him.

“I saw in the morning somebody watching me, it was an eagle, and quite close,” he said.

“I could see her head circling around looking down at me.”

He joked that he promptly gifted the bird to his friend in the sky.