Sat, 20th August, 2016 Bush camp, 15km S of Marble Bar, WA (my big nugget)

7.30am 20.7 degrees, no wind so a lovely peaceful night’s sleep.

Drove back to our hillside patch near Salgash Mine. Steve cleared the spinifex with the rake and I started detecting. By morning tea I had 7 pieces so it was worth Steve’s work. You can see the piles of spinifex he moved. The gold is in just one area on the lower part of the hillside and the top of the creek bank.

Steve joined me in digging a couple of targets. The last one beside a little tree. The sound grew and he had to dig under a big root. He got the target in the scoop and then it disappeared in his mouth for a clean!! A lovely (dirty) nugget – yes nugget – much bigger than a nuglet!!

1 nugget and 14 nuglets – some are dark with ironstone. Good morning’s work.

Back to it after lunch. Steve got out his detector but only found one more little bit in his hole he dug the other day on the edge of the bank of the creek – that hole had already produced 7 nuglets!! I only got 2 more pieces.

Headed back through the Salgash Mine area – well it is marked on the Hema map as that but we only found some shallow shafts. The green rock is a gold indicator as well as the blue coloured shale.

Walked up a bulldozer trench to the top of a rise.

Great view. We go through that valley to get back to camp, up and down and then in the creek.

As we headed back we found another track heading south. On the Hema it has the town name of Salgash at the end of the track. It hasn’t been used a lot and the trees were closing in but we wiggled our way through then into a creek bed for a while as we travelled with big hills on each side.

Eventually the trees won and we parked in another creek bed then walked along the track. Spotted a cave and went up for a look. Looks natural but we didn’t climb up any further.

Back to the van for the gold weigh-in. I guessed 2.1g and Steve said 2.4g for our nugget but we were astounded as it came in at 3.92 grams!!!

We had a grand total for the day of 18 pieces for 7.45 grams!! As all but one little bit were found with the 2300, the amount went on my tally!! They will need a good acid wash to clean them up.

Got a drink then checked online to see how Malcolm went racing a Phillip Island – 1^st for Race 1 and 3 more races tomorrow.  Watched the BMX at the Olympics. So sad – our boys won all three heats but fell apart in the final – but they made it to the final. Unfortunately the girls crashed so they didn’t make it to the final.

Rang Jeff to see where he got and to skite about my big nugget. He got to Ruby Well to check out the big specimen found with a D9 but apparently it didn’t have as much gold in it as first thought. The chap drilled off the bit where the gold was showing and there is no more signals on the rock once he removed that bit. Might be a couple of ounces in it but not what they were originally hoping for. The chap offered for Jeff to detect areas he has finished mining and said he would take 20% of what Jeff found so that could be interesting.

Rang Mum and Dad to brag about my nugget too and catch up with the home news.

Steve’s new shower connection works well. Weather says it is going to get cooler over the next week – just when we were starting to enjoy the warmth!!