Tues, 25th June, 2024 Bush camp at Mud Tank Zircon Field, off the Plenty Highway near Gemtree, NT

3.8 degrees, clear sky.

Ventured out at 9am to do our clothes washing. Didn’t take long to warm up in the sun which was nice.

Steve used the dirty water then to wash the stones and then we picked out the zircons. We found heaps. Not sure how many are good for cutting but we will take them back to Woodgate and put them in Terry’s tumbling machine just to brighten them up.

After lunch we headed back to our spot to dig out more. Got heaps and a huge bomb.

I have phone reception with the phone connected to the tall aerial and we had missed a call from Rebecca and Clive. Rang them back and caught up on all the news. I then rang Margaret as it is her 80^th birthday today. She celebrated with all the family on Saturday night and sent me some photos - fantastic cake and it was delicious too. So glad she had a wonderful time. She said she doesn’t feel any older and is looking forward to catching up with us somewhere in the bush.

It got up to 26 degrees in the camper with it all closed up. All the washing is dry and packed away again. There are only about 4 camps here. The chap said it was packed last week.

Our friend called in to say they were heading off tomorrow and we could have the old ironing board he was using and his spare water. Very nice of him. We can do the wash at the dig now so we can determine whether a hole is worth working rather than bringing buckets of rocks back to camp. He has a good selection of ‘cutters’ so he was happy with his lot. He said the others further across had been finding some good bombs and lots of small stones.

Lots of galahs flying between the trees around us as we relaxed by the fire. The temperature was very nice so we stayed out till 7pm watching the stars appear. I spotted 10 satellites too before the cold got to us.