Sun, 14th August, 2016 Bush camp, near Marble Bar, WA

7am 22 degrees, a few clouds and light breeze.

Jeff headed off early. We are a bit slower!! 8am before we headed off. Continued down Corunna Downs Road looking for a place to detect. We left ‘Dougies’ book and the Tengraph maps behind but we saw on the Hema the Salgash Mine area so followed that track in. Crossed some dry creek beds passing lots of flowering Sturt’s Desert Peas. Will get some plants on the way back and try to grow them in my herb garden!!

Up and down little hills and into very hilly country – a lot like Palmer River country.

Got to the mark on the map but only found a couple of shallow diggings in the rocks. Continued down the track to a creek then stopped for a detect. Very rocky area and lots of spinifex and nasty scratchy trees. I wandered around but only found rubbish and a few hot rocks. Steve tried in the creek and after digging up a staple he found a nice little nuglet. I got enthused and followed him up the creek but I only found the other staple!!

I went back to the truck for a cuppa. Steve came back saying he found some scrapes further around and a big signal in the creek. We drove round and I started on the scrapes. They were straight up the side of the hill and they had scraped out the creek. I found a nuglet but it was so dirty I could hardly tell it was gold. Kept going and found 6 more before lunch. Steve hadn’t found any more so he was on lunch duty!!

I only found one more after lunch but Steve continued down the creek and found another two. Back over the hills and through the creeks and collected a couple of Desert Peas.

Headed back to camp for smoko. Steve’s three nuglets came to 1.90 grams.

My eight pieces came to 3.20 grams so we had a good day.

35 degrees in the van and the sky is clear again. I worked on my blog and Steve drove off to find a spot to do his oil change. Mike & Anne rang from Coen to say thanks for the Palmer River directions as he had found a lovely 35 gram nugget. How exciting to think there was still a big nugget still there.

Said bye to Ray and Carol as they are heading off tomorrow. Jeff went down to a spot one of the others mentioned further back towards Nullagine and got a couple of pieces.