For centuries this part of the Philippines' coast has been a fabled source of gold. Driven by desperate poverty, thousands of small-scale miners all along this coast will do anything to find it. That includes risking the lives of their own children.
Gold mining here occurs in remote jungle camps - deep in the mud. Most of it is illegal and everywhere we turn we find children at the heart of this business, like 11-year-old Joshua, who works on the banks of the San Isodora Larap River.
LARRY LASAP, FATHER (Translation): Boy, come here behind me, get down low and hold this.
Joshua would prefer to be at school but his dad has to pull him regularly out of class to work.
JOSHUA LASAP (Translation): I miss my friends, I miss going to school.
Together they search for gold in the earth and rocks below the water table.
JOSHUA LASAP (Translation): I miss my classmates. Shall we carry this together, dad.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): I’ll do it so it goes smoothly.
Joshua has missed so much school that he's now two years behind. Here it is common for children to leave school at a young age in order to work. But Joshua dreams of a better future than this.
JOSHUA LASAP (Translation): I want to go back to school. I want to finish my education.
MAN (Translation): Do you want to continue gold mining?
JOSHUA LASAP (Translation): No.
By going to work he's helping his father, Larry, support their family. It's a heavy burden for an 11-year-old and a situation his father regrets.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): Joshua is a big help to me, because if he doesn’t help me we won’t have enough food to eat.
Small-scale miners like Larry earn about 500 Pesos a day or $15. If they bring along their children to help, they can dull that amount.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): But if he has time, he needs to help me here, he is my work companion.
Joshua lives with his five brothers and sisters in this crowded shack, but it's home - a place to play and be a kid again.
VIRGIE LASAP, MOTHER (Translation): It’s really hard, we have no choice because we have so many children.
In The Philippines 80% of the population is Roman Catholic - large families are common and with many mouths to feed, it often falls to the older children to help support their siblings. Joshua is the second-eldest and he shares this responsibility with his teenage brother.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): My children are a big help to me, it’s a very hard job. If I can find a better job, then I will go. For example, if I found something that would help me put him through school, that would be better.
Larry wants the best for his children, but he's in a tough situation. The vicious cycle of poverty forces him to endanger his family. A recent accident sent shock-waves through the mining community and Larry himself had a narrow escape.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): Suddenly, the tunnel was filled with water and then the earth collapsed on them.
Larry was involved in an illegal practice called compressor mining - an extremely dangerous method of gold extraction where miners work underwater breathing through thin tubes. He says someone used dynamite down a mineshaft, causing the deaths of more than 100 people.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): The electricity from the light globe killed them, I clearly saw bubbles coming out, blood coming out of their mouths, noses and ears. So many people died from the explosion in the water.
It's a chilling story, but not enough to stop Larry gold mining - nor taking Joshua with him.
LARRY LASAP (Translation): It’s up to God, I take my chances. I really need to earn money, I am gambling my life for my work. Whatever happens is up to God.
In this area, there are 15,000 small-scale miners like Larry. Risk-taking is part of their everyday lives and on the weekend they gamble on an age-old blood sport. Blades are attached and the cocks fight to the death or until one is too injured to carry on.
Here locals gamble with their meagre earnings for one of the winners - for one of the winners his gamble paid off.
REPORTER: What's your job, what do you do for a job?
MAN: Gold mining.
REPORTER: So how much did you win today?
MAN: 3,000.
REPORTER: Oh, good. 3,000. That's good, hey?
MAN: Philippine money.
REPORTER; Philippine money - 3,000 Pesos. How long would it take you to make that money from gold mining?
MAN: One week.
REPORTER: One week!
That's about $85. With his winnings he can avoid a few days digging in the mud. The losers have no choice but to return to work. As the crowd disperses, injured Roosters are patched up ready to fight another day. Throughout this region, entire villages rely on gold mining. It's known as the "gold coast".
Nelson Nadia has six children including two-week-old Nathaniel. Once Nelson was lucky enough to find one big haul worth about $1,000.
NELSON NADIA, COMPRESSOR MINE OPERATOR (Translation): I was able to get a lot of gold, 30-40,000.
He runs a compressor mining operation - the same underwater method that nearly killed Larry. It's not used anywhere else in the world and every day his wife Christine worries if her husband will come home safely.
CHRISTINE NADIA, NELSON’S WIFE (Translation): Of course I’m scared because it is hard and the tunnel is really deep and we have a lot of children. The earth could collapse and he would get buried, there have already been such incidents.
To reach Nelson's site, we travel up river. We arrive at a makeshift rig made of bamboo and palm leaves and meet one of the young miners. Gerald is just a teenager but every day that he goes to work he risks drowning. Gerald takes a thin hose and clenches it in his teeth - this is his lifeline. He then lowers himself 30 feet below the surface to dig for gold in the dark.
GERALD (Translation): I get scared, I do this for my family… to help my parents.
One kink in the tube or a blockage from mud and he won't be able to breathe. Children are often used as their lungs have not yet been damaged by the fumes that get sucked into the tubes. Although Nelson has been doing this for two years, even he finds it difficult.
NELSON NADIA (Translation): As I go under, I get a bit nervous because it is deep and there is a lot of pressure causing accidents and falls. I go down slowly and once we get to the bottom we remain careful and we feel along the passage because we can’t really see much. It’s dark and once we reach the end when we are really far in we try to look for our hammer and the container for the rocks and then we start hammering underneath.
GERALD (Translation): I’m afraid, if the earth collapses, I will get buried underneath.
Because compressor mining is illegal, no-one knows how many men or children have died doing this. But out here there's no sign of enforcement.
NELSON NADIA (Translation): Here’s the gold.
To increase their chances of finding gold, Nelson and Gerald stay deep underwater for long periods of time. Today they've been digging at the bottom for three hours.
NELSON NADIA (Translation): When a lot of rocks have broken off, we put them in the container which is then reversed and pulled up when it is full.
The rocks they chiselled out of the cavern are then scoured for anything containing even the tiniest speck of gold.
REPORTER: Any gold? No gold.
NELSON NADIA (Translation): No gold.
This time the risk was for nothing and so Gerald must go back down the shaft to search again for gold.
REPORTER: How much do you get paid in one day, say?
GERALD (Translation): 200 pesos ($6).
REPORTER: For one day?
GERALD (Translation): Yes.
REPORTER: Okay.
GERALD (Translation): Sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes it’s alright, sometimes you can’t even buy a dish. There’s nothing to eat.
Local Mayor Ricarte Padilla insists that shutting down compressor mining would only force families further into poverty.
REPORTER: And who is responsible for trying to stop children being on these sites? Is that a national police issue? Is it yours?
RICARTE PADILLA, MAYOR OF JOSE PANGANIBAN: It is our office. Of course, as I have said, we are doing the best we can here. If I could only give them opportunities, job opportunities - I will take them away from, especially from compressor mining. It is just that, you know, I have no alternative at this point.
REPORTER: Why is that? What would happen to them if you went up there tomorrow and stopped them doing compressor mining, what would happen to those people?
RICARTE PADILLA: Well, of course, they will go back to you and ask - can you feed us? Can you sustain our families? Can you sustain our children who are going to the school every day? In is the only way we get our source of income. I mean, it's a situation where damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
In the village of San Isidoro I meet Mark Antony. He's carrying water home so his youngest sister can cook. Children here have little time for playing. Mark Antony spends much of his time digging in the nearby soil pits looking for tiny specs of gold. He works alongside his father, Marcos.
MARK ANTONY (Translation): I do this so I can help my sisters, it’s really for them. I work with my father three days a week
REPORTER (Translation): Do you want to work elsewhere?
MARK ANTONY (Translation): I want to work somewhere else because it is a very difficult job.
Mark Antony is managing the school and wants to be a police officer when he grows up. He hopes he won't have to leave school permanently to work - a wish his father shares for the sake of his future and his safety.
MARCOS DONOR, GOLD MINER (Translation): You shouldn’t bring a child here… because this is very dangerous. You can be buried, if you get buried you will not survive. In the process of gold mining, you have to gig it out first.
Together they fill their sacks with soil and then transport them to the mill. At the mill, they go through the soil panning for specs of gold. Their eyes are trained to find gold fragments as tiny as grains of sand. Whatever they find must then be processed into one solid piece and to do this, Marcos is taking a huge risk. He uses Mercury to bind the specs of gold together.
MARCOS DONOR (Translation): So the gold will stick onto it. It’s going to seek it, so they can bind together. It is like a glue, you could say it is like a magnet.
The use of Mercury is banned. Unfortunately, Marcos is exposing his son and himself to a poisonous metal which can cause brain and organ damage especially in children. He then burns off the Mercury, creating a toxic vapour. It's the only way they can get it ready to be sold. The gold they produce comes at a high personal price which is why it's being tagged as dirty gold.
MARCOS DONOR (Translation): It’s only when the process is over that we are going to find out how much we will earn. It is possible to get rich mining gold, lots of people have become rich but if you are not lucky, you’d be just like this.
Today Marcos sells to the local gold broker and mill owner - Adelia Adea.
ADELIA ADEA, LOCAL GOLD BROKER: The cost of this gold is 1950 - one and a half grams. Almost four persons, the owners of this gold.
REPORTER: Four persons?
ADELIA ADEA: Divided by four persons.
Marcos has to share the earnings with the other men at the dig site.
REPORTER: You're going to get 470 Pesos. Is that enough? How long will that keep your family going?
MARCOS DONOR (Translation): I’ll just make my portion work because that is all I’ve got. I’ll have to.
Marcos has made just $13 and for now he's putting on a brave front. Adelia says she would like to pay more but claims the price she can pay is set by bigger brokers further up the buying chain.
ADELIA ADEA: Because the men who pick up the gold it’s so hard to get.
There's about a 50% mark-up between what the local gold miners are paid here and the international gold price. It's unrealistic for them to expect to get all that money, but all the miners tell us that if they could get just a fraction of that profit, then they wouldn't have to have their children work with them.
Along The Philippines' so-called "gold coast" small-scale miners are among the country's 25 million workers living in poverty. The local mayor knows the root of the problem lies in the distribution of wealth.
RICARTE PADILLA: Our problem is very much anchored in poverty but ironically, history will tell that they the produce as much as 60-80 kilos of gold every month. But where does this wealth go? You will see gold going to the black market.
REPORTER: When it goes to the black market, where does it then go?
RICARTE PADILLA: Go to Hong Kong, go to China.
REPORTER: Really?
RICARTE PADILLA: Yes.
Much of the gold produced here is sold on the black market to avoid taxes and while the miners fail to get a fair price, they will continue needing their children to work.
REPORTER: There seems to be a lot of children working on these sites.
RICARTE PADILLA: More and more people are getting poor because of the imbalance in the mining industry. More and more people are losing the capacity to send their children to school. We cannot put all the responsibilities and obligations to the government. It has to be between the parents and the government. You have to be prepared to give a solid future for your children.
But some parents have little choice. Even with his son's help, Marcos can still barely afford to feed his family of five, let alone send them to school.
MARCOS DONOR (Translation): I want them to finish their education no matter how hard it will be for me. I’m trying.
MARK ANTONY (Translation): I do it to help…so we can live.
MARCOS DONOR (Translation): That’s right.
MARK ANTONY (Translation): So he doesn’t have to suffer.
Reporter and Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Story Producer
GEORGINA DAVIES
Co-Producer and Camera
ED HANCOX
Researcher
HANNAH POULTER
Fixers
SOL VANZI
Story Editor
SIMON PHEGAN
RYAN WALSH
Editors
MICAH MCGOWN
DAVID POTTS
RYAN WALSH
Title Music
VICKI HANSEN