DiggingHoles
Bob Burford
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2013
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 7
Hi everyone,
I joined up a few weeks ago, not long after that my e-mail account was hacked and i was locked out of it. To cut a long story short it was easier to start a fresh. So here i am.
Hi I'm Bob and this is some of my story 30 something years ago my dad started taking me camping out at Ophir. Ophir was just out the road from where we lived no more than 20 minutes drive. We would camp there for 1 maybe 2 or 3 Nights at a time , a couple of times we stayed for a week I just remember it was always fun. Mum would take a few books to read and she say rack off go exploring but be back by dark. I remember running around looking in all the tunnels and the old gold diggings,fishing, walked for hours in ever direction, up hill, down hill. Dad sad to me when you look for gold you need to check every rock, I must have picked up and looked under what seemed like 10,000 rocks every day. I would fall asleep most nights at the camping table eating my dinner.
In the mornings id wake up in my sleeping bag which was wrapped in an old woolen blanket or two then wrapped in an old canvas truck tarp like a donna-kebab, it all weighed a ton but it was so warn. One time I woke up early in the morning in my Everything was quiet everyone was asleep. Frost everywhere it was so cold out of my sleeping bag but i needed to pee, so got up and ran up to the toilet block on the way back to our camping spot i heard some splashing in the creek. To this day i will never forget seeing on the other side of the creek this big brown rat he was sitting up at the edge of the water eating something. I was shivering so much, I was so cold but I didn't want to look away from this Rat. I heard a noise near our camp i looked over to see my dad putting some wood on the fire. when i looked back to the Rat he was gone. Later that day i went to where he had been and there were all these little bits of broken yabbie shells.
I remember one day saying i'll show you how to find some gold. We had walked what seemed like hours and hours to his secret patch and we had to move all these rocks it took hours. But then showed me how to do the panning in this old tin pan, this old tin pan was always in Dads ute up until this point the only thing id seen it used for was collecting apple from trees which had branched that hung over fences. He said when your panning you have to go real slow, take your time, shake it like this, keep it just this deep in the water. I was about 6 or 7 like i cared how deep this pan was in the creek. After a little while dad said wow here you go there is some gold. I looked into the pan and sure enough there it was and i had no idea what it was or which bit i was was the good bit so i copied my dad and said wow to. Dad took out an old, well new back then PECK'S paste jar and pushed the stuff in the pan into the jar. That's when i noticed the little yellow rock. i asked dad what the yellow bit were and he laughed.
One night dad said he some people were coming to have dinner with us so we were having a special dinner. Dad pulled out the jaffle iron, Spaghetti and cheese on outside jaffles. Desert was tinned apples and blackberry jam jaffels. cooked over the campfire these were and still are about a thousand times better than cooked at home in the electric toaster thingy. When it got dark and everyone would be sitting around the camp fire. That's when all the stories came out, the gold got bigger, The Fish were so big you couldn't get them into the back of the ute. Almost every night that started with a big group telling tall stories ended with me waking up in my sleeping bag and not knowing how i got there. Yep the old days were the best and digital cameras/ phones with cameras spoil a good story.
A couple of those mates of dads who had sat down with us for the Gourmet spaghetti and cheese jaffels and talked about them big nuggets got their photo in the paper for finding some gold which was called the Fathers day nugget.
So that's how i got started and i still enjoy going to Ophir.
I joined up a few weeks ago, not long after that my e-mail account was hacked and i was locked out of it. To cut a long story short it was easier to start a fresh. So here i am.
Hi I'm Bob and this is some of my story 30 something years ago my dad started taking me camping out at Ophir. Ophir was just out the road from where we lived no more than 20 minutes drive. We would camp there for 1 maybe 2 or 3 Nights at a time , a couple of times we stayed for a week I just remember it was always fun. Mum would take a few books to read and she say rack off go exploring but be back by dark. I remember running around looking in all the tunnels and the old gold diggings,fishing, walked for hours in ever direction, up hill, down hill. Dad sad to me when you look for gold you need to check every rock, I must have picked up and looked under what seemed like 10,000 rocks every day. I would fall asleep most nights at the camping table eating my dinner.
In the mornings id wake up in my sleeping bag which was wrapped in an old woolen blanket or two then wrapped in an old canvas truck tarp like a donna-kebab, it all weighed a ton but it was so warn. One time I woke up early in the morning in my Everything was quiet everyone was asleep. Frost everywhere it was so cold out of my sleeping bag but i needed to pee, so got up and ran up to the toilet block on the way back to our camping spot i heard some splashing in the creek. To this day i will never forget seeing on the other side of the creek this big brown rat he was sitting up at the edge of the water eating something. I was shivering so much, I was so cold but I didn't want to look away from this Rat. I heard a noise near our camp i looked over to see my dad putting some wood on the fire. when i looked back to the Rat he was gone. Later that day i went to where he had been and there were all these little bits of broken yabbie shells.
I remember one day saying i'll show you how to find some gold. We had walked what seemed like hours and hours to his secret patch and we had to move all these rocks it took hours. But then showed me how to do the panning in this old tin pan, this old tin pan was always in Dads ute up until this point the only thing id seen it used for was collecting apple from trees which had branched that hung over fences. He said when your panning you have to go real slow, take your time, shake it like this, keep it just this deep in the water. I was about 6 or 7 like i cared how deep this pan was in the creek. After a little while dad said wow here you go there is some gold. I looked into the pan and sure enough there it was and i had no idea what it was or which bit i was was the good bit so i copied my dad and said wow to. Dad took out an old, well new back then PECK'S paste jar and pushed the stuff in the pan into the jar. That's when i noticed the little yellow rock. i asked dad what the yellow bit were and he laughed.
One night dad said he some people were coming to have dinner with us so we were having a special dinner. Dad pulled out the jaffle iron, Spaghetti and cheese on outside jaffles. Desert was tinned apples and blackberry jam jaffels. cooked over the campfire these were and still are about a thousand times better than cooked at home in the electric toaster thingy. When it got dark and everyone would be sitting around the camp fire. That's when all the stories came out, the gold got bigger, The Fish were so big you couldn't get them into the back of the ute. Almost every night that started with a big group telling tall stories ended with me waking up in my sleeping bag and not knowing how i got there. Yep the old days were the best and digital cameras/ phones with cameras spoil a good story.
A couple of those mates of dads who had sat down with us for the Gourmet spaghetti and cheese jaffels and talked about them big nuggets got their photo in the paper for finding some gold which was called the Fathers day nugget.
So that's how i got started and i still enjoy going to Ophir.
Hope those hackers stay on the other side of the fence from now on and only good luck follows you around...Cheers Wal. 
