Post by Reno Chris on Nov 9, 2011 17:07:03 GMT 10
My trip to Australia went great, I saw lots of new and different stuff, including Kangaroos, Spiny anteaters, Emu, wild parrots, giant lizards, Eagles, a very different geology, etc. I had a great time. I learned a lot, really experienced that part of Australia up close. Australia is a great country, and I truly enjoyed my visit - it was a wonderful time. I met a lot of great Aussie prospectors and really enjoyed my month in that country. Australia has many, many good things going for it. The state of Western Australia is a wonderful and amazing place. I hope to be back for another visit in a few years.
The flight over the Pacific was fine, just very, very long. I spent a total of around 21 hours in the air and a lot more waiting around in airports. I probably slept 7 hours of the 15 hour trip across the pacific. Steve Herschbach, my friend from Anchorage, joined me on the trip. Though a little tired, we arrived none the worse for wear and adjusted to the new time fairly easily. All of my luggage got through just fine with none lost. The end of our flights and start of our journey to the outback was Perth. The town Perth is a pretty town of 1.5 million people on the Indian Ocean half a globe away from my home.
We met up with Jonathan Porter, the Australian prospector who was our host, at the airport. The first whole day we were in Australia, Reed’s, the local prospecting shop held a send off barbeque for us, and about 100 folks came by. Our send off barbeque went well, the place sold every copy of my book that they had in stock. I was treated very nice at Reeds Prospecting Supplies in Perth.
After buying our food and some camping supplies we didn’t bring with us, we headed out to the desert of the outback. Jonathan and his friends had been finding some nice gold, and we went to an area Jonathan suggested where he had been successful in the past. It was a very new experience - I saw the Magellanic clouds in the sky each night – and all the stars and the Milky Way were spectacular. We saw a flock of wild Emu one day – they are like an ostrich - they ran across the road.
We traveled around and camped in 4 different areas around the Cue / Meekatharra / Wiluna region, heading out each day to explore or check and work patches in various areas around where we were camped. Visiting all these different places, we saw a lot of different country, and the gold was fun. Steve got his first piece within minutes of turning on his metal detector. Only took me about an hour to find my first piece. Each day we would gear up between 7:30 and 8, work until noon when we would take an hour break for lunch and then work detecting for gold again until about 5 pm. Although you move slowly listing for the sound of a target, it made for a lot of miles walking.
We had a fine time with JP and the other people we spent time with were great as well. JP was an amazing host and entertainer – it was always fun spending time with him. When the conversation would slow, he always had a few jokes to liven things up. Of course he was also very knowledgeable about the area, and the gold bearing spots which had been productive. He proved himself to be a fine camp cook (even though we volunteered to cook, I think he felt safer doing it himself). He did a great job of getting us out to different patches and gold bearing areas. The three of us had many interesting campfire discussions.JP also did a great job of showing off the best of Australia to us, no matter what it took to do so. One day when he was out on his quad, he saw an Echidna - an anteater with the spines of a porcupine. To show it to us, he carefully strapped it to the storage box on his ATV. That worked great, but the frightened animal crapped on his storage box. Still, the Echidna was an amazing thing to see (it was carefully returned to the wild unharmed).
The weather was beautiful and the geology different and fascinating - many areas were covered with magneite iron ore. September around the Meeka-Cue-Wiluna region of W.A. was just beautiful this year weather wise. Because of the rains earlier this year, there were fields of wildflowers and short grasses growing everywhere. The terrain was flat with low rolling hills, and with all the flowers, many of the gold bearing places looked like some kind of park. However also because of the rains, the flies were really bad. Folks told us they were the worst in a decade. At times I had as many as 300 flies buzzing around me. They did not bite, but were very, very aggressive. They would fly up your nose, into your ears, your mouth or eyes. Even if you waved them off, they would fly away about a foot, then turn around and land on you right back where they started from. I wore a head net to keep them out of my face, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. They landed on my arms, legs and chest instead. They were like nothing I’d ever seen. They were active from about 9 am to sunset. Mosquitoes came out near sunset – and they did bite.
In the past, I’d camped out for more than a week before, but never even as much as two weeks – this time I was out for a whole month. So I spent a month looking forward to sleeping in a real bed, but sleeping on the ground, I got a feel for what the early day pioneers went through. Some nights we had campfires and cooked over the coals, other nights we just used some electric lights to sit and visit. Just about every day we saw something new or unexpected – animal life, geology, etc. Often we camped right on or very near gold bearing patches of ground. One of the things I hoped for was that we’d see new and different things, and we definitely got to do plenty of that. I also lost about 14 pounds by walking 7 or 8 hours a day - and camping where I could not buy any snacks or other goodies.
On the gold, I did OK, but not exceptional. I got some nice gold – about 1 and ¼ ounces, not enough to pay for the whole trip, but I paid for most of it. Steve got almost 2.5 ounces and JP got around 4. Part of the reason my total was less was just that for whatever reason, I simply could not get my detector over anything of any size. Two nuggets of about 3+ grams (1/10th ounce) were my largest in a month's detecting. There were a number of other reasons, one is that we spent about 5 days prospecting new areas and found nothing there - but it’s hard to find new patches if you just look in the same old places. Another is that we also found that there are many, many folks out there pounding the old patches because of high gold prices (folks from Victoria state, many of them). We visited a number of "secret" patches and found folks camping on them or new roads accessing them and obvious signs of new work, new chaining of old spots just to eek out a few grams. People were even following our tracks just to see where we were going. Anyway, every new patch that is found is one fewer that's out there to be discovered, every nugget chained out of an old pounded patch is one fewer to be taken. There are still new patches being found, but even with zillions of minelab detectors pounding the ground, there are fewer each year, and the old places are just getting beaten to death. There is still gold to be found (don't get me wrong) it’s just not as easy as it was 10 years ago. In fact one of the Australians asked me if there was anything I'd do different about our trip, and Steve and I - we both agreed - we'd have come 10 years ago. The other thing I'd have done different is buy a thicker foam mattress to sleep on the hard ground for a month.
The flight over the Pacific was fine, just very, very long. I spent a total of around 21 hours in the air and a lot more waiting around in airports. I probably slept 7 hours of the 15 hour trip across the pacific. Steve Herschbach, my friend from Anchorage, joined me on the trip. Though a little tired, we arrived none the worse for wear and adjusted to the new time fairly easily. All of my luggage got through just fine with none lost. The end of our flights and start of our journey to the outback was Perth. The town Perth is a pretty town of 1.5 million people on the Indian Ocean half a globe away from my home.
We met up with Jonathan Porter, the Australian prospector who was our host, at the airport. The first whole day we were in Australia, Reed’s, the local prospecting shop held a send off barbeque for us, and about 100 folks came by. Our send off barbeque went well, the place sold every copy of my book that they had in stock. I was treated very nice at Reeds Prospecting Supplies in Perth.
After buying our food and some camping supplies we didn’t bring with us, we headed out to the desert of the outback. Jonathan and his friends had been finding some nice gold, and we went to an area Jonathan suggested where he had been successful in the past. It was a very new experience - I saw the Magellanic clouds in the sky each night – and all the stars and the Milky Way were spectacular. We saw a flock of wild Emu one day – they are like an ostrich - they ran across the road.
We traveled around and camped in 4 different areas around the Cue / Meekatharra / Wiluna region, heading out each day to explore or check and work patches in various areas around where we were camped. Visiting all these different places, we saw a lot of different country, and the gold was fun. Steve got his first piece within minutes of turning on his metal detector. Only took me about an hour to find my first piece. Each day we would gear up between 7:30 and 8, work until noon when we would take an hour break for lunch and then work detecting for gold again until about 5 pm. Although you move slowly listing for the sound of a target, it made for a lot of miles walking.
We had a fine time with JP and the other people we spent time with were great as well. JP was an amazing host and entertainer – it was always fun spending time with him. When the conversation would slow, he always had a few jokes to liven things up. Of course he was also very knowledgeable about the area, and the gold bearing spots which had been productive. He proved himself to be a fine camp cook (even though we volunteered to cook, I think he felt safer doing it himself). He did a great job of getting us out to different patches and gold bearing areas. The three of us had many interesting campfire discussions.JP also did a great job of showing off the best of Australia to us, no matter what it took to do so. One day when he was out on his quad, he saw an Echidna - an anteater with the spines of a porcupine. To show it to us, he carefully strapped it to the storage box on his ATV. That worked great, but the frightened animal crapped on his storage box. Still, the Echidna was an amazing thing to see (it was carefully returned to the wild unharmed).
The weather was beautiful and the geology different and fascinating - many areas were covered with magneite iron ore. September around the Meeka-Cue-Wiluna region of W.A. was just beautiful this year weather wise. Because of the rains earlier this year, there were fields of wildflowers and short grasses growing everywhere. The terrain was flat with low rolling hills, and with all the flowers, many of the gold bearing places looked like some kind of park. However also because of the rains, the flies were really bad. Folks told us they were the worst in a decade. At times I had as many as 300 flies buzzing around me. They did not bite, but were very, very aggressive. They would fly up your nose, into your ears, your mouth or eyes. Even if you waved them off, they would fly away about a foot, then turn around and land on you right back where they started from. I wore a head net to keep them out of my face, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. They landed on my arms, legs and chest instead. They were like nothing I’d ever seen. They were active from about 9 am to sunset. Mosquitoes came out near sunset – and they did bite.
In the past, I’d camped out for more than a week before, but never even as much as two weeks – this time I was out for a whole month. So I spent a month looking forward to sleeping in a real bed, but sleeping on the ground, I got a feel for what the early day pioneers went through. Some nights we had campfires and cooked over the coals, other nights we just used some electric lights to sit and visit. Just about every day we saw something new or unexpected – animal life, geology, etc. Often we camped right on or very near gold bearing patches of ground. One of the things I hoped for was that we’d see new and different things, and we definitely got to do plenty of that. I also lost about 14 pounds by walking 7 or 8 hours a day - and camping where I could not buy any snacks or other goodies.
On the gold, I did OK, but not exceptional. I got some nice gold – about 1 and ¼ ounces, not enough to pay for the whole trip, but I paid for most of it. Steve got almost 2.5 ounces and JP got around 4. Part of the reason my total was less was just that for whatever reason, I simply could not get my detector over anything of any size. Two nuggets of about 3+ grams (1/10th ounce) were my largest in a month's detecting. There were a number of other reasons, one is that we spent about 5 days prospecting new areas and found nothing there - but it’s hard to find new patches if you just look in the same old places. Another is that we also found that there are many, many folks out there pounding the old patches because of high gold prices (folks from Victoria state, many of them). We visited a number of "secret" patches and found folks camping on them or new roads accessing them and obvious signs of new work, new chaining of old spots just to eek out a few grams. People were even following our tracks just to see where we were going. Anyway, every new patch that is found is one fewer that's out there to be discovered, every nugget chained out of an old pounded patch is one fewer to be taken. There are still new patches being found, but even with zillions of minelab detectors pounding the ground, there are fewer each year, and the old places are just getting beaten to death. There is still gold to be found (don't get me wrong) it’s just not as easy as it was 10 years ago. In fact one of the Australians asked me if there was anything I'd do different about our trip, and Steve and I - we both agreed - we'd have come 10 years ago. The other thing I'd have done different is buy a thicker foam mattress to sleep on the hard ground for a month.