⭐ Gold Detecting Show'n Tell

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Dig'n-it said:
Great stuff Bjay. How old is he?
I took my 19 yr old out last year for a long weekend and he was bored as ........ He had a few goes but after not finding gold he gave up and spent most of the time in the car on his phone ...... too typical these days.
He's 16 ,17 in a couple of weeks. Pretty surprised he wanted to go but has just finished doing exams so Maybee just wanted to get out and do something different(I'm not complaining). I won't tell him this but Ide already found the target and pointed him in the right direction but didn't know it was gold as it was undug. Was an awsome moment seeing his face. :Y:
 
Bjay said:
Dig'n-it said:
Great stuff Bjay. How old is he?
I took my 19 yr old out last year for a long weekend and he was bored as ........ He had a few goes but after not finding gold he gave up and spent most of the time in the car on his phone ...... too typical these days.
He's 16 ,17 in a couple of weeks. Pretty surprised he wanted to go but has just finished doing exams so Maybee just wanted to get out and do something different(I'm not complaining). I won't tell him this but Ide already found the target and pointed him in the right direction but didn't know it was gold as it was undug. Was an awsome moment seeing his face. :Y:
That's great Bjay. An awesome father son moment. Let's hope it's stirred further interest and creates further detecting together. :Y:
 
Dig'n-it said:
Great stuff Bjay. How old is he?
I won't tell him this but Ide already found the target and pointed him in the right direction but didn't know it was gold as it was undug. Was an awsome moment seeing his face. :Y:

hehe

hope he isn't reading the forum....
 
Hi all,

We just got back from our yearly couple of weeks swinging around the Stuart Town area of N.S.W. So I thought I'd post up a few photos and a bit of a story to go along with them.

It was really great catching up and spending time with Heatho, Reeks and Mbasko once again, also getting to meet Mr. and Mrs. SinHof. The weather was perfect, though we started out on the first week with a nasty cold that kept us fairly cabin bound for the most part. Not ideal, but it's that time of year. It was nice to be over it and back swinging in good health everyday.

It felt great to get back into the swing of things -no pun intended- as a year away from swinging makes you a little uneasy at first, (like starting from scratch!) though I was soon reassured on the very first few minutes after a full reset of the Zed due to an overload protection from accidentally switching it on in the house and then a general GB. I walked no more than two steps and I had a nice signal while still running in the Factory Presets. I dug down carefully to the 8" mark and out came a nice little 0.10gm nugget! I did put the Zed back into my current settings soon after which greatly improved things, though it was good to know it'll find the small ones pretty deep set in [FP]. Heatho called that nugget before I found it too! :lol:

It was great to see everyone getting nice gold here and there, even though our first week or two was looking pretty lean gold-wise, however we ended this one with a bang to say the least!

I can proudly say that I finally bagged my first nugget over a gram after twelve years of detecting on and off. It ended up weighing 1.6gm and was easily heard at a depth of 16''. This blew us away! Even with the module running on my general headphone volume of 11, we could hear the target while still un-dug. I initially thought it was at the 14" deep mark, but just doing a quick measure on the Fiskars scoop I realised they are actually twelve inches long? It was four inches deeper than the scoop when it was finally out of the hole. This makes me think I've underestimated most previous nugget depths? I always thought they were around eight or ten inches long? Not necessarily a bad thing though I guess. Haha!

My first ever nugget over a gram and the hole it came from :D
1498007825_img_0284.jpg
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Picked up a nice Quartz Speccie while out swinging with Mbasko. This went 1.2gm, though I'm guessing it contains around 0.7 or 0.8 grams of gold? It's certainly a wonderful looking piece. Not a great photo as it's zoomed in a bit:
1498007868_img_0184.jpg


There were the usual and interesting old junk targets. The most surprising of which was a big, old 1860's key. This came out of the old diggings on the Stuart Town common. I also found the tip off of an old hand forged miners sinking pick. I'll bet he was annoyed when that broke away. I know how he would've felt as it happens to ours here on the opal too now and again.
1498003564_img_0186.jpg


It was also a nice surprise to pull two nuggets out of previously dug holes. One was already out of what appeared to be an old GPX hole. The Zed absolutely screamed on the target when I checked the dirt pile of yet another unfilled hole :rolleyes: but after thinking it was a .22cal bullet, I was somewhat surprised to find it was a nice little 0.2gm nugget. I thanked whoever it was for the easy gold and nicely re-filled the hole :Y:
1498007992_img_0267-1.jpg


The second nugget somebody missed was a little more surprising. The hole was a smallish square one of six inches wide by two inches deep, so I would almost be 100% certain it was an old SDC dig. To my relief, I knew it wasn't one of our old holes as our picks have rounded blades and won't dig square, making our holes look dished out nicely for the SDC coil. I waved the trusty Zed over the hole and the target was again very loud and unmissable! Figuring they left the target in the refilled dirt again, I cleaned the hole out back to a solid base, rechecked with the coil and was elated to hear it was still in the ground. I dug down to around 7" or 8" before the target was out in a nice lump of clay. After opening the clay this is what someone had left behind. It went 0.91gm:
1498004717_img_0266.jpg


Dad did well on the SDC, pulling a few nice little nuggets here and there, though he still had those days on the lead shot and minute rusty wire that you'd rather forget. He was right with me to see most of the bigger ones come out with the Zed though which was great and I'll never forget it.

I haven't got much of a photo of the 2.51gm in smaller nugs that we got in another area, only pictured on the scales:
1498008075_img_0290.jpg


And this is the total 16.09gm nuggets for the rest of the trip:
1498008129_img_0306.jpg


This ended up being our most successful trip to date as far as total weight and nugget size went. All up it was 18.6gm total and the best day was 4.14gm.

All in all a great trip away and I'm already looking forward to next year's trip! :Y:
Kindest regards,
Shauno.

EDIT for spelling/grammar.
 
Great story and photos Shauno, wish I could have stayed longer mate, that will teach me to make arrangements earlier next time.... Was great catching up with you and your dad again, it's always an absolute pleasure to catch up with you blokes.

Fantastic looking gold, glad you did well. :Y:

I'm already looking forward to the next trip.
 
Finally had time to take a picture of the gold we got from the Maryborough meet up over the Queens birthday long weekend.
After soaking the 5.7gms in acid for the last 6 days, its now down to 5.15 with the smaller nuget weighing 0.45gms.
Both found using a GPX 4500, the larger one was found at Kirk dam and the smaller was taken from a gully at Amherst, Paddy's ranges state park.

1498017076_image.jpg
 
Hi Syndyne,
Thanks for the story and gold pics, we certainly enjoyed our time with you and your dad and the rest of the troops that joined in the fun. It's great to see you found a swag of the yellow metal and I can understand how you are keen to do it all over again on your next trip to gold country, a fab effort.
Cheers, SinHof.
 
SinHof said:
Hi Syndyne,
Thanks for the story and gold pics, we certainly enjoyed our time with you and your dad and the rest of the troops that joined in the fun. It's great to see you found a swag of the yellow metal and I can understand how you are keen to do it all over again on your next trip to gold country, a fab effort.
Cheers, SinHof.

Thanks kindly! Next time we'll be in full health and good spirits for certain. Haha! That first week of being crook was just a miserable old time.

It most definitely took a bit of coaxing to get that yellow stuff to finally show itself (and probably a little blind luck on my behalf), but I think we really made up for lost time. Took about ten days to get resettled on the Zed again. She was humming along beautifully after that.

Great to meet you both and looking forward to seeing you guys up here at the Ridge soon :Y:
Kindest regards,
Shauno.
 
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