Banjawarn Station, WA, Australia

For the past seven years, John Griffith (69) has been living in an old trailer in the middle of the Goldfields, 100 kilometres from Laverton. He sets out to explore the area with a detector nearly every day. ‘My greatest discovery? That was an 18-ounce nugget that weighed nearly 600 grams. It was a good one, although it’s been a couple of years since I found it. Based on today’s prices, the nugget would be worth quite a bit: more than 20,000 euros!’

He doesn’t see his children too often, and he's only met his two grandchildren once in his life: ‘No, they don’t visit me. People from the city never come here, and my daughter hates this place.’

The trailer contains a simple bed whose sheets haven’t  been changed for a while, a tiny kitchen, and a VCR with a stack of American films beside it. John says he never really gets lonely: ‘I don’t – I go to Laverton quite often.’ How often? ‘About once a month or something.’ I ask him how he sees the rest of his life. ‘What I’ll do when I grow old? Well, I suppose I’ll die, won’t I?'