An American national, from Wyoming, Mr Yates’ workshop is a unique meld of the North American animals – bears, deer – combined with wooden scenes and sculptures endemic to Australia’s identity.

His latest project is a grand gesture to his adopted home of Chewton, where he has lived for the past five years.

In a bid to pay tribute to his adopted home of Chewton, he is taking trunks of Cyprus trees and unearthing gold miners within.

Mr Yates began carving – for many a by-gone art – roughly 10 years ago.

About the same time, he was diagnosed with leukemia. In 2005, 2009 and 2010, the cancer reared its ugly head. He needed two bone marrow transplants.

But he is now grateful, five years on, to be in remission.

“It is a rare art. In Wyoming … there is a lot of carving and whittling,” he said. 

“I loved the idea, but I didn’t try it.

“Then I got leukemia. I was pretty ill for a while and I tried carving as a hobby.

“I loved it, I wanted to do it all the time, so I did. Life is short.”

“I am very, very passionate about it. Once I tried it I couldn't stop.

“I was addicted. I was lying in bed at night just thinking about it.”

The first installation of his project is complete, with a larger-than-life sculpture of a man draped in 1850s garb, carrying a pick axe and a billy can, standing tall outside Mo’s Antiques on the main road through Chewton.

Mr Yates’ hope is that the statues, which stand about seven to eight feet tall, draw attention to the hard-working people who hunted for their fortune more than 150 years ago.

“No one ever knows Chewton for its gold mining history,” Mr Yates said.

“People seem to know Castlemaine, but not Chewton. It’s our little town … so it’s truly exciting to share that story, to make Chewton a lot more notable for its role.”

Mr Yates said he was captivated by the stories from his research of the Goldfields.

“So many of them were on struggle street. It was a chance for them to have a life-changing moment,” he said. 

“The effort I can’t fathom. Digging holes by pick and shovel and by hand - they were very tough, very resilient.”

“Hell, I might have been out there myself. It was an incredible chance for a different life.”

Mr Yates is no stranger to prospecting and is known to rise early, gold detector in hand, and walk the landscape. 

Though he has lived in Australia for 13 years, and five of those in Chewton, the bounding of a nearby kangaroo still astounds him. 

The owner of Mo’s Antiques, Gerald St John, had Mr Yates’ first sculpture cast in his own image.

“Gerald wanted it to look like himself, and we thought, we don't have any pictures of any notable miners, because it was a pre-photography era, and it has to look like somebody, so why not?” he said. 

He has already begun whittling away at his second sculpture, and the Bendigo Advertiser caught up with him on his fourth day of labour – the work-in-progress is captured as the cover shot of the Weekender. 

For his next miner sculpture, Mr Yates won’t have the benefit of a life model. Instead, he is working from a grainy black and white image of Robert Penny, “about half the size of my pinky”.

Robert Penny was chosen because he established a bakery in 1875, which ran for 101 years until 1976.

Mr Penny worked tirelessly there for 48 of those years.

This new miner will be cast in the erstwhile baker’s image, with the blessing of his descendants, some of whom still live in the area.

The statue, which will see him holding a “peel” or a bread shovel, will not be standing on a pedestal, but will be partially sliced through and bolted to the bakery door.

The effect will be no doubt striking, if “a little ghost-like”, in Mr Yates’ words.

Mr Yates said the process can be daunting. 

“The size of the wood dictates what it will look like. But wood carving is unforgiving,” he said. 

“I stand by the old adage ‘measure twice, cut once’.

“The hardest part is looking at that big round of wood and making something come out.”

He starts drawing on kneecaps and body parts in pencil on the log, before picking up a chainsaw to block out the arms and legs.

“It really takes on a life of its own there,” he said.

He then takes to grinders to shape more details, before using burs to refine the intricacies of the work. 

With stains and oils the wood takes on new colour, 

It’s an inherently tactile medium. 

“I don't think there's anything quite like wood that makes you want to touch it,” he said. 

But his woodwork has also touched others.

One piece of note in his impressive repertoire is an Anzac triptych – three wooden panels that depict a quintessentially Australian story.

In the first, a country boy sits atop his horse, a dog by his side, on a grassy hill with trees, overlooking his farmstead.

In the next, the hollow of a hat reaches out from the wood panel – the hat is lifted in farewell, a family waves as the boy rides down the road and into war.

The third panel shows the same boy and horse, frozen as they are charging into battle, bayonet poised for attack.

Mr Yates, the US-national, said he was stirred by the narrative of these young country men taking their own horses, their own companions, to fight.

Of more than 130,000 horses that went to battle, only one returned to Australian shores.

Mr Yates also works with metal mediums – but in a separate studio to his wood workshop. 

In his words, “sparks and sawdust do not get along”. 

Deer antlers, cast from black iron, frame his work space. A metallic silhouette of New York’s iconic skyline, a gift for his daughter on her wedding day, is affixed with winking lights that shows this city never sleeps.

A bear, it’s fur painstakingly etched and textured from wood, stares with nail polish-glazed eyes.

Mr Yates’ style reflects a unique blend of his American past (which resonates deeply in his rich, jolly voice when he speaks about his work) and his fascination and love for rural Australia. 

The launch of Mr Yates’ first gold miner-inspired piece, modelled on Gerald St John, was a successful affair in Chewton last Friday night, which saw about 100 people from the close-knit town gather to celebrate their history, cast in a creative new light.