Thursday, 11 April 2019

Mon, 8th Apr, 2019 Malcolm Dam, east of Leonora to Jungle Well, Tarmoola Station, 60km north of Leonora, WA



7am 21 degrees, clear sky and cool ESE wind. The wind blew all night.

Packed up camp. Said bye to Mark and Heidi as they headed out to find another spot to detect. Mark had found a Garmin (handheld GPS) that someone dropped a while ago. The batteries had corroded but he cleaned it up and it worked. It even had some waypoints and the chaps walking track so Mark checked the co-ordinates and found some were for the caravan park in Leonora and the others were around where he had lost it – no gold treasures unfortunately.

Drove into Leonora to fill up the van’s water tanks and grab a couple of fresh vegies. Rang Mum and Dad as we aren’t sure about phone service where we are headed. The sun is out again in Cairns and after a nice chat Mum said Doreen had just driven in so they will have a lovely time catching up.

Headed north up the Goldfields Highway. Two big dump trucks near the railway area waiting to go to a mine somewhere.


Further up we had to pull off the road – Mr Police car made sure we did as he drove towards us on our side.

Then two big trucks came loaded with an excavator and dump truck. Maybe they came this way to avoid going through too many busy towns like Kalgoorlie etc.



Continued on our way then stopped at Sullivan Creek for a cuppa.

We then turned off onto the old Darlot Road then around the south end of another Round Oak mine and we headed up Rob’s graded road to Jungle Well. We are west of where we were at 10 Mile Outcamp, still on Tarmoola Station. A geologist working on taking samples around the old gold mine open cut pit showed Rob and Glen some lovely sized nuggets he had found. Hence we took out a 40E Permit to see if we can find where he got them from as we know it wasn’t on the actual mining lease. We are on an Exploration Lease which is owned by a nickel company so we would never had looked here. A lot of ground to search but here’s hoping we fall over a nice patch.

Found a spot to park with a bit of shade (we still going to have some high 30s temperature this week) on salt and pepper ground (good indicator for gold) but it is quite lumpy stuff. There has been an area nearby cleared of the rocks so will give that a going over with my detector.

We are near the old Jungle Well. It still has water but isn’t operational as Rob used the old gold mine open pit for the cattle as it is full of water.

Lunch 37 degrees and no wind which makes it feel hotter. We played a game of 3 to Kings and Steve won so we are one game each on this new score sheet.

Big gust of wind blew through but luckily no dust with it. A light breeze then started which was nice.

I read my book while Steve went for a wander with his detector.

Some clouds came across the sun so I took my detector for a walk over the pushed area – only found bulldozer swarf and a button. Steve just got lots of exercise, walked for 6km.

The flies are very friendly so we had our drinks in the van.

Jon rang for more information about camping at Marina Plains – so glad he has some great friends to do these things with now. He is wanting to get a small tinnie now so he and Jess can go exploring and fishing.

The wind has picked up which is cooling things down a bit. Lovely sunset colours.

Nice evening – didn’t need a fan on.


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