“It involves Chinese illegal mining,through government corruption to murder and a lot more,” he said. “I was thinking recently it should be told. Not sure if it’s right for you but thought I would put it out there … feel free to call if of interest to you.”
Head’s email was like many tips we get as journalists. Sometimes they lead nowhere. But sometimes they lead us down a rabbit hole of information,scandal and intrigue.
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I emailed Head,suggesting we meet up in person at a cafe in Canberra. It put me on a path that more than a year later would produceBlood Gold,the series thatThe Age andThe Sydney Morning Heraldlaunched on Thursday.
Head and I met for the first time at Mocan and Green Grout in January 2021. It’s an upmarket cafe in the national capital’s trendy Acton area,full of exposed copper,wooden panels,avocado and chèvre. It was a sharp contrast from his former life in remote Ghana,where he worked for the Australian company,Cassius,in a landscape he described as Tatooine – a reference to the dystopianStar Wars desert planet.
Over coffee,Head told me he had witnessed the deaths of more than a dozen miners in Ghana in January 2019. He was still traumatised by the event. The 48-year-old father of three fidgeted as he told me he had pulled miners’ bodies out of the ground. He said he was still grappling with what he had seen – teenage boys frothing at the mouth as they gasped for air.
“It wasn’t a mining accident,it was mass murder,” he said.