7am
20 degrees – a lovely warmer night though we were still under our blanket but I
got straight into my shorts and shirt to go detecting. Clear and sunny again
and a light breeze.
Back
to the creek area to work it over. I made money but not with gold – I found a 5
cent piece!! The birdwatching chap came by and stopped for a chat.
Steve
came back goldless too for smoko. I decided to work on my laptop so he headed
off again.
I
heard a 4-wheeler approaching on the road but he went on by our camp. Steve met
him further down the road and got chatting. He showed him a 3 ½ ounce nugget he
found then having decided Steve was worthy he started digging in his backpack.
He started to panic when he couldn’t find what he was looking for but at last
pulled out a plastic bag with the other half of the nugget, it weighed 4
ounces. He found them about 8 foot apart and they clearly look like they were
once one nugget but was broken years ago when it was pushed to the surface. He
has an older detector and has only found one other nugget, 15 gram but if that
is all you find and it is over 7 ounces we would be happy!! He drags a
detecting coin behind his 4-wheeler and his advice to Steve was to just work
the gullies for the bigger nuggets – there nothing on the hillsides. Small
stuff on the flats, his wife has a 2300 so they obviously get the smaller
nuggets with that. There were 3 guys camped where we are till the other day and
they had got 9 ounces from around here – it’s the same wherever you go – “you
should have been here last week!” Oh well, nobody gets it all or else people
wouldn’t keep coming back.
The
boys headed over to another area in the car and I wandered over onto the flats
after lunch. Was getting bored after digging a couple of bits of rubbish, one
was a little tack, then I got a nice signal and up came a lovely little nuglet.
I started gridding the area then I found another one nearby, then another
beside that, they both were attached to rocks. Got two more signals close by so
left them to get the boys to try their detectors over them. I continued to grid
and got another loud signal. Continued working but didn’t get any more targets
and as the sun was starting to set I dug up the last one. Well actually I
scraped the top and the target moved. After shifting the dirt around I realised
it was a rock sitting on top. Had a bit of gold on one end.
The
boys came back so I waved them over and Steve tried his detector. He could pick
up one signal but agreed he would probably have passed them over. I dug it out
and it was smaller than the others and the last one was the smallest of the
lot. Steve took a photo as I was very proud of finding my own area. I piled
rocks where I had found the targets – Steve taught me to do that so I can see
if there is a pattern etc.
After
my excitement I asked how they went – Steve got one little nuglet but Jeff
scored well finding an area of creek the others had missed and he got 12
nuggets that made his total very nice.
Back
to the van for weigh-in. The 5 nuglets came to 1.79 grams as well as I have the
3 specimen pieces which we will dissolve the rocks later to get the gold out of
them.
Steve
was 0.39 grams.
Lovely
warm evening – left the windows open in the van, 25 degrees.
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