Prakas buys a bit of gold every year, always on a Saturday, for the Hindu festival Diwali . This year, thousands of gold-hungry Australians and a record-breaking price surge got in the way. ‘The debasement trade’: is this what’s driving gold, bitcoin and shares to record highs? Read more

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says. “Maybe I’ll just buy a smaller version … if I can’t afford [it] … just to fulfil the tradition.”

The Nepali Australian man made the hour-long trip into Sydney’s CBD on Saturday to buy gold – then turned around when he saw the 400-person queue snaking across Martin Place.

Hoping to skip the queue, he decided to buy online, but was stuck in the two-hour queue of pre-purchasers when he returned to the ABC Bullion store on Tuesday.

The price of gold had

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