This body of work grew out of a global project I have been engaged in for quite some years — documenting the lives of the world's 45 million artisanal miners. Men, women and children mining with their bare hands and the most primitive of tools, producing a significant proportion of the world's gold, diamonds, coloured gemstones and a significant share of the world's other mined commodities.

When it was suggested I turn my lens on Australia's own prospectors I was initially reluctant. The visual spectacle of large groups of miners working confined areas in places such as Burkina Faso, Ghana, the DRC and parts of Central Asia, South America and South-east Asia is extraordinary — and I knew Australia wouldn't be able to match that.

At the same time I had been writing critically about the compliance regimes being pushed on artisanal miners by organisations such as the OECD and the World Gold Council. Responsible sourcing. Sustainable supply chains.

I had argued — quite forcefully — that these frameworks delivered almost zero benefit to the miners themselves and were designed primarily to benefit developed world consultants and the world's largest mining companies. By making it cost and compliance prohibitive for the world's artisanal miners to continue. Which would ultimately lead them to foregoing their access to resources in favour of the world's largest companies.

Then Covid hit. Travel became very difficult and I decided to examine the lives of Australia's own artisanal miners instead. I had no idea what I would find.

But what I found was fascinating — and deeply troubling.

Regulation had largely killed Australia's artisanal mining industry. Environmental compliance, native title, cultural heritage legislation, occupational health and safety frameworks — a quagmire of costly regulation that the big mining companies, with their armies of lawyers and entire environment departments, could absorb easily. But which had quietly strangled the small operator.

The game had been rigged for the big guys.

Working batteries had closed en masse, making it almost impossible for small operators to get their ore processed. Underground miners were close to impossible to find.

Despite searching my home state with an almost literal fine tooth comb, genuine full-time artisanal miners were extraordinarily rare. And for every one I found, the problems were almost identical.

Australia's mining industry was built on the backs of artisanal miners. It happened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — and now those same forces are at work in the world's poorest countries, dressed up in the language of human rights and environmental responsibility. A literal and proverbial trojan horse.

I have no doubt that what happened here awaits the world's 45 million artisanal miners if the world's richest nations are allowed to impose this path.

The attention being paid to artisanal mining in developing countries has little to do with caring about miners, their rights or their environment. It is about access. Access to readily mineable reserves — something few western countries can any longer claim to have.

And Australia's prospectors confirmed to me exactly where this road leads.