Exciting, dangerous; A must read story; Gold Prospecting !

G'day mates,

Finally I can present you with our gold prospecting adventure. I'm sure you will like it because it's full with exciting things.
I wrote it a bit in a diary style.

Now, get yourself a drink and if you smoke, a packet of cigarettes ( I recommend you to quit though) ARE YOU READY???!!!  OK lets go.......

15th June, I've got my license;

Our first night was in a park in Kalgoorlie were you are allowed to stay 24 hrs. Its a free camp but we were warned that the council of Kalgoorlie isn't so nice and that you have to have a closed container for your grey water, just a bucket is not enough. They come around and take pictures, if you don't have a closed container, you get fined. We heard this after we had seen the ranger coming passed, making pictures. pfff so we rushed to put a decent container under the caravan and made a picture with date and time, just in case......

Just a few images of Kalgoorlie, its a typical old Gold Mine Town......

We stayed a few days in Kalgoorlie and went from the free camp to a caravan park.

   

Towards the mine there is a sort suburb of Kalgoorlie with the name of Boulder;

You have seen the mine in my previous blog and I already told you that the one in Kalgoorlie can eat that one up, look at this, its amazing, especially the movie is a must see; The look out!

  

There should have been a blast at 1 o'clock and we were in time but the blast was too early so already been;

Movie time; watch and shiver;

On the 18 th of June we left the caravan park in Kalgoorlie and did some last shopping. Crikey, our car is protesting as we are loaded that heavy with groceries and of course booze he hardly can get forwards.  "Our" (actually my plan, poor Fred) is to go via Leonora, Leinster, Sandstone, Mt. Magnet, Cue and Yalgoo towards Geraldton which is on the coast again and the first decent town we will see in about 6 weeks, that's the time I want to take for the gold digging.
YES, between Kalgoorlie and Geraldton its GOLD country.

As you have seen I've got my license so now just a spot to go.

 Bye Bye civilisation, Hello Outback......

At the bureau I bought the license you can also get maps where you are allowed to prospect and of course there is much more ground where you can't (which is grey on the maps) then where you can (which is white)!
So after some investigation I found out that there is a nice free camp in a white spot, and I set my mind to that. It's called Credo station. I knew there would be some gravel road but at another bureau the DEC (Department of  Environment and Conservation) they said the road was in an excellent condition.

The first bit, till just before Ora Banda, which suppose to be a little village but I only saw a hotel/pub with caravan park, was bitumen and after that the struggle began. We have to go that same way back so we thought it might get better and most probably won't be that long.

After 25 kilometres jumping and bouncing we were sorry that we had exposed our car and little home to this adventure again. We had done this before and swore we would never do that again but I just had no idea how long that dirt road would be.

Anyhow, when we finally arrived at the spot, we were very happy. There is a homestead on the property with a host and you can camp there and have toilets and showers, no power though, and pay approx. $ 20.00 or you can camp just outside the gates for free.

 More prospectors were there but they went out already early in the morning and came back at nearly dark so we didn't had the chance to talk to them, till......

Sunday the 21 rst.

 We had a few great days, not too warm for digging, which I did a lot and still didn't find anything.

Into the never never for digging......

 At night it was cool so we lit a fire to keep warm and even cooked our dinner on it.

 Last night it started raining and it's still raining this morning.
The host from the station came to check on us and I asked him how the forecast would be and there was some storm coming. He couldn't say if it will be like this tomorrow to so Fred and I were thinking of leaving. With that gravel road in mind and the fact that they close roads down when it rains a lot, we didn't like the idea of getting stuck here for days. Because there is also no sun, we are running out of power.

Luckily I went over to our fellow campers, which consists out of one Aussie woman; Kathy, married to a German; Ralf and  accompanied by a friend, an English man; Peter and asked them what they're going to do and they said: "staying, the road it too wet and soft and it seems when you go and damage the road, you get fined for $ 4,000.00 per wheel, they even count your spare wheels. Crikey, that would be $ 32,000.00!! So of course we stay, hope the rain will cease and we can go tomorrow.

We started to talk about detectors and yeh, of course they have the expensive ones. I have a cheap one and most probably will do his job on beaches, but still, I stay positive and keep digging till I fall apart haha.

At about 4 o'clock, John the host called us on the UH radio to say the road was in a good condition as people came in just before. He asked me to inform the others so we and they could still decide whether to stay or to go. Luckily we all decided to stay as a huge storm came over later. I'm going to sleep now, hope it's dry tomorrow I want a shower!!!

Monday the 22nd.
Didn't hear any rain during the night only very much wind which isn't bad because it dries out the roads, we hope.
It is bloody cold and wet but we decided to go and started packing up, we just had some coffee not even brekkie, we just wanted to go! We didn't had any power left and had to turn off the freezer. Luckily because of the cold weather the contents wouldn't defrost so quick.

I called credo station and this time I had Marge, the wife of John, on the UHF radio to ask for the road condition and that was OK. She asked when we were leaving if we could call in at their place to say goodbye as they wanted to come to us but Peter (the Englishman) was in their house on the phone so they couldn't leave. I already found it strange because they wanted to leave as well and the car from the couple was gone but not the caravan and Peter was gone too with his caravan.

When we came at the station we heard that Kathy had cut herself the night before and she and Ralf had to rush off for the hospital in Kalgoorlie. Blimey! they had to drive that road late at night, in the dark and during the storm! They couldn't fix it in Kalgoorlie so Kathy had to fly this morning to the hospital in Perth. Crikey what a disaster for them.

Ralf was not back yet when we left so we didn't had the chance to ask about the road. If we would have known what we would be facing, we would have stayed another day, with or without power I don't care!! It was terrible! The road was so soft, muddy and slippery we didn't only bounce but also slipped the whole bloody 40 k's!!  I didn't even dare to film as I thought I would challenge that we get bogged or even worse. I don't have to make the Funniest Home Video! (Well I did film a tiny little bit because I knew we were nearly at the end, see movie).  At the moment we hit the bitumen we looked at each other with white faces and sighed very deep! Every inch of my body hurts for sitting cramped for 40 k's and approx. 1 1/2 hours, which felt as an eternity.

Watch a small bit of our nightmare, its movie time;

We now are safe in Menzies and we had our shower, Aaaaah, what a relieve but what a shame we can't wash our little house on wheels, look at the poor bugger!

Pity we don't have proper Internet so we can tell the world we are safe. I'll bet ya, we will get drunk tonight.

Picture this;  a grand new caravan park with nice new clean slabs and white pebbles to stand on and here we come with our muddy orange coloured car and caravan. We hoped for some rain but that didn't came. We stayed two nights in Menzies to recover from the cold and the trip. Of course the mud was drying out and pieces were falling off the caravan and car. At the time we left, our spot was covered with clods of dried mud and the beautiful white pebbles were slightly coloured orange. Hope they get rain soon to wipe out our trace.

24 th of June.  We left Menzies and went to Niagara Dam which was recommended by friends. On the road this railway passage like the old days, .......

 When we arrived we saw there were only two caravans and one was there only for lunch and left so we ended with the two of us.

Strange for such a nice place and us was told you could prospect there so why weren't there more people then??

I made my detector ready and put on my old cloth, just have to go to the toilet before I go into the bush and on the toilet door was a sign with a whole story on it and the most important what I read was: " prospectors will be prosecuted!"  Oh oh, so I quickly walked back to the caravan and put my detector to its hiding place again. Ah well, we did a nice walk and stayed only one freezing night. But the place was amazing!

The idea was to do another walk around the Dam in the morning but when we woke up it was only 6 degrees and there was a wind so it even felt colder. We packed up, put the heater on high in the car and drove to Leonora where I got some new maps (were you are allowed to prospect) and we did some shopping in the only supermarket from Leonora.

After that we drove further to Leinster were I had chosen to go to a caravan park especially because of the cold weather. It's a great caravan park, no office or what ever, you just have to go to the supermarket and pay.  The washing machine is free and the sites are only $ 20.00 night which is pretty good value. We booked for 3 nights but we think we will stay longer, again no Internet!

26th June. We are trying to clean the car and caravan, still covered with mud, by bits and pieces. Fred's just done the drivers side and I'm preparing my stuff for detecting and some lunch to take with us. We chose a spot, put the co-ordinates into our GPS and off we went. Exciting!

Except for some lead pieces I of course didn't find anything and about a quarter to one I wandered back to the car and Fred for lunch. After lunch I took my gear again and off I went leaving Fred behind with his e-reader.

At some stage I had the feeling someone was looking at me and I turned around and there was a Dingo staring at me at about 30 meters. I know they can be dangerous so I waved with my detector to let him know I had seen him but instead of wandering off he came towards me so it scared the hell out of me.

I took my UHF handheld walkie-talkie, called Fred to say a Dingo was chasing me. Luckily I wasn't that far from the car yet and I knew that all the alarm bells would be ringing at Fred and he would come to rescue me and yes, he came by car and that must have scared the wild dog off a bit because then he turned and went a bit back where he just laid down to watch us! Well I can tell you, my prospecting day was over! We went home and had a shower and a beer.

I had a chat with some people who told me that normally a Dingo doesn't come near people, they just walk away. Well this one didn't and I had noticed it was very thin so I reckon he had seen me as dinner! Let's see what tomorrow brings!

27 th June.
Another day of prospecting. We met another couple who also are not very experiences and didn't find anything yet so we went together into the bush for two days. Actually we had a lovely time together, it was a pity when they left.

28 th June;
Someone was looking into a tree in the caravan park, just opposite his caravan and taking pictures. I really couldn't see what he saw so he pointed it out to me. Look how amazing they look like a branch, they are called Frogmouth;

  

Its a sort Owl....

30 th June:
The people I had a chat with about the dingo the other day had come back from a trip to Laverton and they asked me if I had found something in the mean time and of course I had to answer negative. They, Noa/Johnnie and Brenda/Russel, must have felt sorry for me because they always find something so they said we could join them as they had heard of a spot where a lot of gold could be found. So on the first of July we took off with two cars, 6 people into the outback. That day Fred learnt how to drive a 4WD properly and also had some Aussie language lessons.

Movie time;

Crikey what a terrible road, corrugated, potholes, narrow at some stages and again we were scared to damage our car. And yes, when we returned to the caravan park, without any success by the way (for me because they found gold),  Fred saw our car leaking oil. Luckily Russel was a mechanic and he saw it was the power-steering and most probably will be fixed by tightening the clamp a bit.

Russel couldn't believe that I don't find anything so he started testing my Detector with some gold he found. Well my detector doesn't respond on tiny pieces so I'm doomed to only find big ones. OK that will be a challenge, but I don't give up.

Today it's the second of July and we are here in Leinster now for a whole week and will be leaving tomorrow. Fred tightened the clamp, cleaned and packed already some things and I cleaned the caravan in- and outside. Ready to go to the next adventure! Find the changes after the mud adventure;

July the 3 rd.
Packed our caravan and left Leinster. We had a great time. We're going to Sandstone and approx. 30 k's before Sandstone there is a free camp with a nice view so we stopped there just to look at the view as we already had decided to go to the Sandstone caravan park. It's going to be 2 degrees at night and because of that we want power for the heater. Too cold to do without.

Anyway, during this picture shooting stop at the free camp, Fred checked the car and sadly had to find out that it was still leaking oil, damn!! I hope it won't be a mayor repair again because it seems that this gold digging adventure costs us more money than we earn from it! Crikey what a disaster!

On the road you also see a lot of interesting things like this big Wedge-tailed Eagle;

Or just the red earth with the first hint of wildflowers.....

Or suddenly you are driving on an Airstrip, or the other way around? The Airstrip is situated on the road...

Sandstone is nice, again like the other little towns we stopped, only a hotel with pub and a little store inside, 

Look what you get when you book a room haha....

a museum with visitor centre and a post office, well, a building with the name "post office" on it, don't know if it's still working. 

And again like the other little almost Ghost towns, once blooming because of the discovery of Gold in the old days.

No digging today, just a little walk through the town and tomorrow off to Mount Magnet.

Looking for Gold maybe sounds romantic but it is a bit dangerous too you know!  Just recall my dingo confront, you can get lost as the country is so remote you could not find your way back and end up dead. I have f.i. an e-trex which is a GPS, I can put the car as a waypoint in the gps and it brings me back to the car. We also have a handheld  walkie-talkie as I already told you so I can stay in contact with Fred, but besides all that we try to keep as save as we can.

During our walk through Sandstone we saw a pamphlet on the post office wall with a picture of a missing woman. The story shocked whole Australia as actually she was one of a couple who were missing last March here  somewhere near Sandstone, a couple who were prospecting. They found the husband dead after a few weeks down in a shaft but she' s still missing.

After sandstone we went to Mt Magnet, again a typical formal gold mine town where all blooming things has disappeared. There are still some mines in operation but not much to do.  The caravan park is OK and we booked for a week.  Also here it is the best to find some company to go prospecting together and we knew that there were some relatives of Russel and Brenda in this caravan park so I looked around the park to see if I could find them and yes I saw a camper-van and a dog with the right description as Russel and Brenda gave me. We went out together, they found gold, not me and it's getting frustrating.

Find out how a prospecting day goes, movie time;

Another nice story to tell; we had just arrived in the caravan park when I was walking up to the office to inform them which spot we had chosen when a car came racing to me and stopped just next to me. A man jumped out and called "TAMMY!, Warren here" ! Well that was a surprise, more for him then for me because I knew he would be in Mt Magnet somewhere this month so I could expect him. He was thinking that we were in Kalgoorlie so he was really surprised.

We met each other on Flat Creek Station, see my story of 12-09-2013!  And since then we stayed in touch. My God, such a big country and it seems that you bump into the same people all the time haha!

Anyway, Warren works for Garret which is the brand of my Detector and he gave me some tips, also in which setting I should put it. That's really a challenge because now it makes a lot of noise.

Every hot rock or iron stone beeps so if you can't hear the difference you keep on digging. I'm trying that particular setting now for two day and still no result other then my head still beeps at night haha!  Be patient, just keep being patient.

It's Sunday the 12 th of July and we are in Cue, left Mt Magnet yesterday. Cue is about the same size as Mt Magnet so again, nothing, just approx. 550 population.

Look how busy.....

There are also some nice buildings .....

But also nice ruins haha....

The caravan park is very nice and on the premises of the park was also a little goal;

And this......

Two of the huts were renovated and you could book them to sleep in.....

 Today we went to Big Bell which is a ghost town and approx. 30 k's out of Cue. Very awkward to walk around in the remains of a town which isn't there anymore. People did live here, there was everything, hotels, schools, hospital, theatre etc etc and now just ruins.

Isn't it awkward that even our Navigator shows the streets .....

Nature is taking over the place.....

In the mean time it's Wednesday the 15 th and yesterday we had rain nearly all day so "we" had a brake.  I did some computer work, especially I was occupied with the film Fred made with his film camera of our time with Sheila and I'm trying to get it on a disc after I've altered it. 

 That already was a disaster!  I spent hours making a nice movie with text, music etc. and then I chose "save movie". It was busy for about 45 minutes, had done already 80 %, when an error occurred and my whole movie was gone!! Totally gone, couldn't find it back anywhere. I don't curse very often but you can imagine I didn't bother this time hiding any indecent words.

Anyway, I did it all over again and now it's just to be put on DVD. Nice thing to spent a rainy day with.

Today I've been digging again, it's going to be boring but I have to say it again; nothing!  But we also had a nice surprise haha! An advantage of a big car! Knowing us you can imagine how much booze we took with us before we went into this gold adventure. As I already explained there it not much between Kalgoorlie and Geraldton and we planned to be in the Outback for 6 weeks. A few days back with still 2 weeks to go, we figured out that there was not much wine left and Fred's Port was already empty! So we were very careful with our drinking lately.

 Because of the cold we didn't use the barbecue for a long time already but now we had some chicken, the sun was shining and we decided to cook it on the barby! When Fred took the BBQ out of the boot from the car, SURPRISE , SURPRISE  he saw under the esky (=cooling bag) two caskets of wine  and one with Port!! Gee, no restrictions any more, hurrah!! Well I have to drink my sadness for not finding any gold away don't I??

Today is Friday the 17 th, last day in Cue and although I had high expectations of Cue, the result is again nothing. Tomorrow we are leaving for Yalgoo, it is still in the goldfields but I never heard it's been famous for gold so no expectations here, but..... you never know!

 Yalgoo is our last goldfield destination. after that we will be going to Geraldton which is on the coast. One adventure stops, the other starts. But it's not that far already. Let's try Yalgoo first!

They are very proud of their town I must say, again its as abandoned as any other towns we were... 

It's Tuesday 21 rst and I had the weekend off from prospecting so I've been busy with publishing a new story for my blog. The New Norcia one. Saturday and Sunday the weather was beautiful but Monday it started raining and at the end it was pouring!! We even had to take down the awning as there was so much wind, it was scary. Today it started with some rain still but in the afternoon it was dry so we did a few hours digging. It's always tricky in the bush after so much rain, you could get bogged very easy so we didn't go very far. Same result!

Little walk we did also here in Yalgoo;

Sorry, this was the only interesting thing, we thought.......

Friday the 24 th., this is my last prospecting day. Wednesday and Thursday, no gold. And also today, nada, nothing, niks!! 5 weeks slogging in the bush without any result.
But don't get me wrong, we still had a nice time, you can't imagine what a different world it is. All these tiny little towns, no shops except for a general store, no entertainment, no nothing.

 And going into the bush, actually is very relaxing, especially for Fred as he has been reading and playing sudoku's all the time I was digging. He also prepared the lunches and just being in the never never, hearing and watching birds (luckily we didn't see any other creepy of dangerous animals), having lunch and just relax, was a great time spending.

Anyhow our gold digging adventure is over for the time being and I know why I didn't find anything, at least I hope that's the case.

I'm not religious but I'm superstitious and at the very beginning when we started our travels in January this year and we were in Maryborough for prospecting, I said in my mind; "I don't have to find anything as long as my cousin, not even 50 yr, facing cancer, survives". ( in the mean time I have more relatives facing this terrible fate) So.......we will see.

Tomorrow we're going back to civilisation, Geraldton. I assume it will be very difficult for us to get used to the bustle again. We will stay there a few days to organise some common things we are far behind with, also some banking stuff and new provisions for the trip up to North. We have a new house sitting in Broome where we have to be in three weeks and the trip to there will pass some great places so please stay with us to enjoy these spots with us.

Today's Saturday and we left Yalgoo. Now coming closer to Geraldton is a real strange experience , the dry red earth is changing into green and yellow fields, the yellow is I assume canola. What a difference in just two hours time. We are also passing more traffic. 

Arrived in Geraldton , WAAHHHH People everywhere!!

I hope you enjoyed this story, so if you think your family and friends would like it too, please pass it on. I would also be very pleased with a lot of readers. Thanks beforehand!

Cheers!