7am
21 degrees, clouds are coming over and there is a light wind.
Back
along the track, takes about 20 minutes, slow driving as it is rutted and
rough. Decided on a spot where there had been some old timer dry-blowing with a
little creek going through it. I wandered down towards the creek and got a
target. Then another, and another. I had 29 little nuglets by lunch. One was a
nicer big piece too. I can officially say that is a ‘patch’. They were all
close together along the edge of the creek. I marked each nuglet’s spot with a
quartz cairn so I could see where I had been.
Steve
had found 9 nuglets and 2 quartz specimens in his wanderings. He got most of the
nuglets from another ‘patch’. After lunch we drove around to his patch, passing
another collection of mining relics. An old Massey Ferguson tractor turned into
a front-end loader. Another old trommell.
The
jeep (we saw the body back at the other camp) with a new motor – 6 cylinder
Falcon.
Steve
had marked a couple of targets for me when he headed back to the truck for
lunch. He said I could have this one as he couldn’t detect it – he just saw it
on the track. I just picked it up and it went straight into my bottle!! Thank
you.
The
next one he saw after he dug a target but he couldn’t pick it up with his
fingers as it was cemented into the rocks. It was a bigger piece so I let him
keep that one since his detector found it!!
He
left me 3 other targets, 1 was a little lead shot and the other two were gold –
so that was nice. He used bigger quartz rocks to mark his finds.
Steve’s
Patch. We can’t figure out how the gold shedding works around here or was it
just left over from previous mining activities here – as long as we pick it up,
who cares!!
Worn
out by smoko from all that bending digging my targets – but I’m not
complaining. Back to the van for the weigh in. It is 34 degrees in the van even
though it is in the shade. We are enjoying the warmth but it is still cool at
night – still have the blanket on. The sky had cleared and the wind is back in
gusts.
Steve
ended up with 18 nuglets for 7.20 grams and then he crushed his 4 of his
specimens and got another 3.04 grams. He liked the one with the gold sticking
up so will keep it in the display box. 10 grams for the day – that’s fabulous.
Wish we could do that every day.
I
had another 10 from Steve’s patch so ended up with 39 nuglets weighing 6.04
grams – top day. We definitely made wages today. That is half an ounce in old
terms.
As
the sun set the wind stopped so it was just perfect by the fire under the sky
of stars. I tried to upload my blog but we are a few metres from where we first
parked and I can’t get it up. I managed to get onto Facebook for a bit –
wonderful news, Rebecca and Jeremy are expecting their 2nd child in
early March.
No comments:
Post a Comment