Old time prospectors were used to working really hard.
There was the long trip to South Africa, stowed away in the hold of a grimy steamer, followed by the buying of all the kit needed to walk to Johannesburg from the coast, barefoot, and then stealing the spades and pans needed to dig and wash for gold, and all of that was before fighting to find some tiny spot of dirt that nobody else had claimed.
About the only good part of all of this is that they got to leave the wife and kids back home to work in the coal mines.
And then the hard work really started. Digging up a few tons of gravel, then sifting it through a pan, in the vaguest hope that a tiny nugget of gold might remain to pay for tonights gruel.
Contrast this with my new hero, who arrives in our system three weeks ago to do some prospecting through Google. Sitting in his armchair at home he loads up a complete website and advertising campaign, which reaches the front page of Google within a few hours. He has no concept that it took me more than 6 months to begin to understand the complexity of the dashboard that Google offers. Or that the mistakes I made cost me the equivalent of a years worth of Malema’s annual salary (the one from the trust, not the one that he tells SARS about).
And then, a few hours later, prospects start falling into the pan. (They would be the gravel that now needs some sifting.)
Sadly, our hero has staked his claim somewhat out of the territory we would normally find gold. He finds some nuggets of a new metal that nobody yet has a use for. (In his case, he finds leads that are exactly what his new site is looking for, but not what he wants.)
In true modern style he gives up within a few days, demands his money back, and goes back to whatever he was doing before, knowing with all his heart that prospecting via search engines does not work.
Isn’t life wonderful?
Bottom line: If you’re prospecting for gold, remember that you gotta shovel a little shyte before you see the gold. If this was too easy, everyone would be doing it and there would be no space for you and me. Be happy that it needs some effort. That’s why fortunes are made in them thar hills.
It’s also why we have closed our gold mine for a while as we restructure to focus on the winners, and deal with all this talk of nationalising the mines, of course.