I woke early, at 5.56 again, but turned over and slept another half an hour. A quick tent takedown, rolled up my sleeping bag, did the same with my mattress and packed everything away in my rucksack. Everything except the toddler food and a boite of beans, which soon disappeared. I hydrated before I set off (drank watter), and reluctantly hoisted my rucksack on to my shoulders, which were sore through carrying the same weight yesterday.

The hill above the campsite was the first of four horizons before I was to arrive at the summit of Great Whernside. My thoughts weren’t powered by positivity, my body hurt from yesterday’s efforts and it was hot in this valley. I set off at 7.30.

I weaved through the village, along the river, to the start of the footpath to the top.

The footpath, once discovered, leads steeply uphill for nearly three miles. God it hurt. The rucksack straps dug into my shoulders like rope, bruising the bones, and my calves were aching and powerless.

And still it climbed.

I couldn’t stop feeling negatively. I usually know that I’ll get there in the end and just keep on going, but this was different.

After several rest breaks in shaded places, I reached the summit of Great Whernside, after four hours of climbing. Rarely could this mountain have been summitted so slowly.

Turning northwards along a short ridge, I welcomed the flat ground. And a big plus was that on this huge chunk of mountain there was no-one. Nobody. Not a soul. Well maybe Chip. We passed together not a million miles from here whilst he graced this planet.

The footpath dropped dramatically down from the ridge. And it was almost as painful working my way down as it was working my way up. This wasn’t working.

I was aiming to get to Hawes, 14 miles away. There was more chance of pigs flying.

I sat down and thought things through. I needed to drop back down to Kettlewell and work out what to do there. I got a tiny signal on my phone, rang last night’s campsite and although they were full Nigel would find a spot for me.

Dropping down the upper levels of Great Whernside were unaware of the pain they had caused me. They had been here for millions of years and I was just a passing irrelevance. In the grand scheme of things these mountains themselves are passing irrelevances, and will be eroded and then captured by the great implosion of the Universe. But not till next Friday.

It took me another hour and a half to make it to Kettlewell. I want to be at home tonight. I want to watch England in my local. I want to eat dinner with, and sleep with, my missus. I want to be in my own bed. I texted Nigel and cancelled my pitch.

At 14.45 there was a tiny bus to Grassington. At 15.15 there was a slightly bigger bus to Skipton. At 16.00 there was a two carriage train to Leeds. At 16.50 there was a taxi to aar ouse. I kissed my missus.

Takeaway pizzas, an hour’s kip, England won in a sea of big screens, fantastic atmosphere and beer and……. I slept in my own bed with my own lass. Heaven.

My sister Che (Deb) is taking me back up to the Dales tomorrow morning. Good old kid! I’m going to get back into mountain climbing training. Hooooraay!!!!

I’m feeling positive again. But we won’t beat Argentina.

Night night.

I slept with my clothes on last night and the sky was so clear that it was cold in the early hours. Usually I piss for England during the night, five or six visits to the khazi not being unusual. But last night was a majestic one wee only. And I got out of bed to do it! Hooraaay!

After a decent sleep I woke at 5.56, feeling good. Within half an hour I’d taken the tent down and packed my gear away.

On to breakfast. I’d bought toddler food and I had a few little cartons of beans left in my provisions bag, so the delightful combination of macaroni cheese (for 12+ months) and baked beans graced the table.

Then I was off. My objectives today were to climb Pen y Ghent, the first of my Yorkshire Top Ten, and walk up hill and down Dale to Kettlewell.

Even before 7am the sun was warming things up quite alarmingly. Pen y Ghent seemed a long, long way away.

My rucksack was quite a problem, at 17kg it was ridiculous. I can travel lighter than that, but it is great exercise, and that’s the objective. If I do the whole route it’s a bonus.

On the way up I spotted an aniseed plant. Chewing the seeds was a delight.

And then up on to the foothills. Penny looks a bit more intimidating from here.

Despite the fact that it was early in the day there were loads of folk doing the Penny as part of the Three Peaks. A 12 hour marathon. They all overtook me. Baarstads!

Finally, just before 9am, I reached the summit. I’d call it the Top but summit sounds more challenging. And in fairness it was very challenging. It’s more of a climb than a scramble, in certain sections, and it’s difficult because a heavy rucksack can tip you backwards, and you don’t want to do that.

Looking northwards the Dales disappeared so far away that they looked like low hills. But they’re not that low.

Then I turned around and had to retrace my climb back down Penny. Most accidents happen on the way down so I was extremely careful on the climbing sections. And it was hot now, dafty hot for 9.30am.

The track back to Horton dropped down to the right, but I was going straight on south, following the Pennine Way, which would twist eastwards up the side of Fountains Fell. It was tough for an old get with a heavy weight in a heatwave. I stopped on the way up several times and drank my water. Which was slipping away quite quickly. Fabulous outcrops of limestone pavements and flowers in full bloom, sprouting from the sockets ground out of the limestone by acidic rainfall from thunderstorms over the millennia.

After two hours of uphill slog I was buggered, and almost out of water. I’d reached the top of Fountains and most of the way from here to the last stage was downhill. The top was flat and made up of peat. With little canyons running though it, just like Kinder Scout in summer.

As the Pennine Way dropped down I felt the heat. By this stage I’d started to fill my bottles with water from the occasional stream. There aren’t many in limestone. Make sure it’s running fast, very cold and springing out of the undergrowth not far from where you are, so that sheep can’t shit or die in it.

At last I made it to the farm where the track to Kettlewell cut across the Pennine Way. The sheep were packed under any shade that they could find.

I sat on a low wall and the old farmer came round and told me that he wouldn’t carry the weight that I’d got. He wanted to be buried up the hill behind us, where he’d buried his dogs over the years, and to be able to look down to make sure his son was running the farm properly.

I staggered out down the track. Hydration wasn’t enough. I made it down to within four miles of Kettlewell but this track was remote, and a car came past only every fifteen minutes or so.

A Yorkshire Dales Ranger’s station wagon came down in my direction. I stuck out my thumb and he stopped. “I’m buggered mate” was all I could manage. He opened the door and I threw my gear in the back.

He took me to Kettlewell and I walked to the campsite through the churchyard. Strange, ancient, unmarked limestone gravestones sprouted throughout.

The campsite rested below the ridge that I would have to scale tomorrow, to reach the summit of Great Whernside. I slept in the shade for two hours on the grass. Buggered. Then I rehydrated with two litres of water, put the tent up, had a shower and went down to the village for a beer.

I’m going back now to have kids’ food and another baked bean carton. Great days. May they last a long time.

Night night.

I’ve been inactive since my gold hunting exploits in Australia and I’m putting on weight and I’m very unfit. It concerns me greatly because the weight gain catapults me into the clinically obese bracket. Actually, I’ve been there at a lower level for quite a few years, so it’s wrong to say it’s catapulted me there, but I’m billowing.

I’m 72 now and I want to be able to carry on trekkin into the future, and I don’t feel up to it at the moment. In addition to which I’ve got a proper trek in late September with my nephew Daniel. We’re doing a ten day, high Alpine walk in the Vanoise region in France. It isn’t a social stroll. In my present state I won’t complete it. I may as well pack up if I don’t. Old bastard.

So.

I need to get fit and I’ve decided to do a new walk over the next five (and a half) days to trigger a continuing fitness commitment. It should be a good challenge, with my tent, food and drink on my back, until my sister Che arrives in a few days, and then I can reduce my load.

The red lined route above looks innocuous but it has a sting in its tail. It is 80 miles long and it climbs 22,000 feet over the ten highest peaks in the Yorkshire Dales. Another problem is that we are entering a new heatwave. However, I will do my best.

I took the train from Leeds this afternoon up to Horton in Ribblesdale, which is the start for me of the Yorkshire Dales Top Ten. The first of the ten is Pen y Ghent, waiting up above Horton. Brooding.

I love this part of the world. Nearly as much as the Peak District. On the way to the campsite I crossed the River Ribble, dramatically low with the present drought conditions.

Then on to the campsite.

And the tent was up in ten minutes.

It’s hot. I’m in a pub cooling down, and I’m going back to the tent shortly. I’ve brought some food with me, contributing to the 17kg in my rucksack. Toddlers’ cartons of purée and six cartons of baked beans for breakfasts. That should slim me down!

It’s difficult to get a signal up here so I’ll blog when I can.

This is me setting off this afternoon from our ouse.

I’ll be slimmer at the end.

Night night. X

Last night was an early departure for me from the pub, back to my room at 8pm. The nice guys were in the bar and I shook their hands. It’s difficult to tell but I think I’ve brought a bit of a diversion from normal life for the lads. We’ve had a nice time together.

The view from my room showed that God continues to put gold into Moonambel.

This morning I packed and was away by 10.30. It’s been a good home and the boys, and particularly Stewart, have been good company. They’ve all got their issues, but their decency shines more than their dependencies and difficulties. Solid folk. Goodbye Stewart. Like my girls, a second generation Sheffielder.

Back to Melbourne.

And a few seafood meals before departure.

Thanks for reading this.

I’ll blog again, but later this year. There’s a remote area in the French Alps that me and my nephew Daniel might explore in September. Should we be spared.

Night night.

I have faith in Redbank. It is a reasonably sized Conservation Reserve, with different approaches, clear geographical features and a lot of gold has been found here in the past. So today, my last day detecting, I’m going over to the far eastern side of the reserve, where there are old shallow alluvial gold workings. Perfect for an old get with a detector.

Well, it was a perfect morning. And, as I walked along the track bordering the Reserve and private land, the vineyard in the background was impressive. If barely perceptible on this photo!

Any vestige of cloud cleared early and I was busy straight away, collecting lead shot and bullet casings buried in the soil. It’s going to be another long day. And a hotter than normal one.

I’ve had the geographical co-ordinates for most places I’ve detected this trip due to spending a couple of days at home on the state of Victoria geological website and printing out maps of the old workings that I wanted to visit. This gets overtaken by events when you get help from different sources, and most notably Damien, but I’m back to one of my pre-chosen areas. Next to the Sunraysia Highway. The entrained HGVs using this highway at speed forced me to back my car off the roadside and well into an opening in the trees. The force of wind from these monsters is incredible. The heaviest, out in the outback, weigh up to 175 tonnes!

I started detecting and I liked the ground. Not littered with scrap metal and not much of an overburden until you reach the clay and rocks underneath. Then it’s hard work.

Once again the day descended from the start into a shotgun pellet chase. I found dozens.

By early afternoon I’d worked my way down the hill that descended from the Sunraysia Highway, and part way up the side of the hill on the other side of the valley. I’d gone off course and my Garmin said I needed to head due West. I felt more confident. Away from the road, and even the noise of the juggernauts had faded into the background, the lead shot had reduced. It could be on. Suddenly there was a loud shotgun blast that made me jump. The Bush is quiet, spookily so, and the shot really had me leaping like 12 lords.

This is a Nature Conservation Reserve and the shot I was finding were from the old days. Nobody is allowed to fire guns in the Reserve. There were another two shots quickly following each other. Two pillocks with guns or one with a double barrelled shotgun. Not much gets past me.

The direction had shifted to the south and slightly closer. I kept on detecting and thought it would go away. Then another shot, much closer. Shit!

I quickly kicked the earth back into a hole I was digging. I hadn’t come across anybody in my 19 days detecting and I didn’t want to come across whoever this was. Two more shots a bit nearer and I was off. I didn’t run, that would make a noise and I’d probably went a pisser. If I headed towards the sun then I would meet the Highway at a perpendicular. The shots receded, as had my hairline over too many decades to recall. It took me half an hour to get back to the car and I headed back to the giant mullock heap near Moonambel, the scene of my biggest nugget find. As the sky turned deeper Indigo. OK smart arse, if you don’t think it’s Indigo what do you think it is? Prussian Blue? You’re having a laugh!

This wasn’t far from the quarry which I had left in a hurry yesterday after being spooked by someone who was no one saying ‘Hello Dave’. Stewart, the pub owner, had gone up in the afternoon to collect lumps of quartz as decoration for his garden. He was mindful of what I had said about the disembodied voice, and the hairs on the back of his neck (why is it always the back of your neck?) had stood up as soon as he left his Ute. He thought someone there was watching him. He could hear them walking around him in the Bush but couldn’t see them. He was freaked out by it and got back in the Ute and drove home.

The ants, not the big buggers, just the little buggers, go bonkers when they feel the electro magnetic field generated by the detector. It’s like an ant rave. Happy Mondays for Hymenoptera.

I faded into the hot afternoon and for the sixth day running I didn’t find gold. It’s almost like finding gold isn’t the objective. It’s looking for it that counts. Gold is the icing on the cake, but the cake is gold hunting. It’s been 19 successive days of hard labour, rewarded by enough gold and silver, together, to make a ring for my lass. It wasn’t meant to be solely gold, that’s why I found the 190 year old shilling. Lost by some poor lad working his guts out digging a hole halfway up a mountain. It must have slipped out of his pocket and into the mullock heap developing around the excavation. He must have been distraught when he realised it was gone. A shilling in 1860 was enough to keep a family alive for a day. A substantial loss. But I’m sure that he would be happier knowing that his loss is hopefully going to become a family heirloom. Worth little and highly valuable.

I’ve loved being here. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it. I’ll do a final blog for this trip tomorrow but the gold hunting is over.

Night night.

It’s hot again, oh my goodness. Back up over 30c today in the quarry I was detecting in. A cauldron, cauldron I tell you!

Brian, my mate from the bar, offered to show me a hidden quarry where there had to be gold.

The pub is closed on a Monday but Stewart cooked me breakfast. Classic and stunning bacon and eggs on toast. Thick, salty bacon, fried to crispness, and perfectly fried eggs. Sometimes with tomatoes and mushrooms.

Then I picked Brian up in the car and he guided me up into the Redbank Conservation area. Past where I’ve been before, and he told me when to stop. We walked up the side of the mountain to our right and he led me up a winding path to a hidden quarry. I drove him back to his house and then drove back up.

I grabbed my gear and walked to the highest part of the quarry.

I started detecting, and after digging up lots of lead shotgun pellets I stopped and drank half a litre of water from my Camelbak. Within minutes of restarting detecting I was thirsty again. This was my 18th day of detecting on the trot and I was feeling it. The quarry formed a natural amphitheatre to capture heat and exclude the breeze. I tried to keep ahead on hydration and I wasn’t sweating, just transpiring into the atmosphere. I was disappearing through my own pores.

The sky here is amazing. It starts at the colour of a Caribbean bay and rises through a range of blues to Indigo.

I think blue and green should be together seen in this context.

Brian says he’s lived in the Bush most of his life and loves it. Some days he climbs a mountain and just sits on the top all day. He’s in his fifties, he’s on his own, although his sister shares his house, and he has a Staffy dog. Life is straightforward for him and I just love the guy. Serge too, who lives in the pub. He’s in his fifties. When he was a baby he fell in the fire. His eyesight is poor because his eyes burned. His left hand and foot are short without nails because they caught fire. He’s vulnerable and suppresses bad things that have happened since, through medication, both prescribed and proscribed. He is the gentlest and nicest of men.

Stewart, the pub owner, is in his sixties and is surrounded by chaos. He wants to sell the pub but nobody wants to buy it. Twenty young Swedish women on a bus journey around Australia turned up the other night and blasted out ABBA on the jukebox. Drove me out of the place. A hen party turned up the previous week and ran amok! Stewart likes to sit in his armchair in the pub, which is dark and never looks open, and watch US detective and courtroom programmes. Customers are an unnecessary diversion from the tv. When things kick off he sinks lower in his chair until he reaches the point where he says ‘You can all f*** off, I’m closing’. He’s a diamond and he’s looked after me, telling me which patrons are iffy and have done time and which of the others I can trust.

The middle of nowhere and we have Eastenders on steroids.

Meanwhile back into this furnace I ask you now to venture, you whom I cannot betray. Thanks Leonard. It doesn’t help that I not only have to wear boots, I also don heavy duty Swiss army trousers, but I have to tuck them in my socks to stop Bull Ants and scorpions getting up my legs. Sweaty or what? But at the moment it is dry heat so, as I said earlier, I am just transpirational.

It was poor going so I dropped down the sides of the quarry to detect the slopes lower down. Each metre lower added another 1c to the temperature, or so it felt. No joy at this level. So I dropped down to the quarry floor and detected there.

Sometimes the sound of a target is so faint that you think it can’t possibly be anything other than hot rocks, stones containing a high concentration of iron minerals, or the detector sighing at the absence of gold. Then you scrape the surface off with your boot, and the sound becomes a little more distinct. Then out with the pick and scrape off half an inch of the compacted clay or earth/rock mixture, usually baked into a concrete consistency. The detector sound will now clearly reveal a target. Turn the pick round, its head is triangular in shape, and use the pointed apex to dig deeper, then scrape out the dislodged material. When the target has still not been removed from the hole it cannot possibly be anything but gold. Shotgun pellets or bullets, even from 180 years ago, would not have penetrated this deeply. Then after you have thrashed the earth with your pick for half an hour, removed tens of kilos of material in a large pile, and you finally put your detector down the hole, and it is silent, the target is outed!

By this time you have drunk a couple of litres of water to keep you from fainting. Now it takes a further ten minutes to determine where the target is on the pile of earth, and to run it across the detector in your scoop. Until there are only a few pieces left in your scoop and the detector is now making a very loud noise. Finally there are a couple of pieces of earth left in the scoop, and it is still making the detector wildly excited, so you take one out. And when you pass the scoop over the detector with the remaining piece of earth it goes ballistic. Then you break the clod in half. And a lead shotgun pellet falls out.

Then by law you are required to infill the hole with any material that you have taken out. Replace any plants accidentally uprooted, because uprooting them is a criminal offence, and then return the original dead leaf cover. I kid you not. And I’ve been doing this for seven hours a day, non-stop for 18 days. And for the last 5 days I’ve not found gold.

I worked my way to the edge of the quarry floor, where the forest met the open space. There was a huge pile of earth and rocks, where an old gold mine had been infilled with its mullock heap.

Sorry to keep crapping on about the heat. I never thought I’d last this long. The flies are buggers too. Landing on your eyes to steal some liquid. Keep an eye open for Bull Ants and don’t even bother about snakes, they seem to be sleeping at this time of year.

By now it was late afternoon. My water was low. The heat hadn’t abated and I picked up a faint signal. Going through the half hour ritual of digging a deep hole and finding a shotgun pellet, I found a shotgun pellet. As I stood up, completely exhausted, something strange happened.

I walked back to the car and drove to Stewart’s pub. The bar was closed. I had a tin of chilli con carne in my room, and a small tin of Heinz baked beans. I emptied them into a plastic takeaway container, put it in the microwave in the galley at the pub for four minutes and smothered it with Tabasco, what I’d bought yesterday. Within 15 minutes I could take on the bloody world. Come on!!! Have a go!!! I’m big Dave Smith from Sheffield!!!!!!

Night night.

A bloke in the pub last night, another one, told me about this spot near Waanyarra, which is the other side of the legendary gold town Dunolly.

I had breakfast and motored up there. A warm day today. I turned off the main road to follow a track to Waanyarra Camping site. On the way I had to stop at the historic graveyard.

It was moving, as these places usually are. These poor buggers came here for the gold rush and died. We’re miles from anywhere and they died here. No houses, just old, decaying skeletons.

And a few better off folk.

And a few who are marked by unadorned stones.

Well I’m not a Christian, or in any way religious, however I feel spirituality on occasions. Maybe it’s just emotion, because I have some of that in me, and maybe it’s just self-pity because I’m more concerned about my end than theirs. Who knows? But I shouted ‘May God bless you all’ because I wanted any lingering vestige of this forgotten clump of humanity to feel that somebody cared.

Then I stumbled back to the car and went down to the fairly remote camping site. There were two groups of people resident down there and I wanted to make sure that if I parked the car there they wouldn’t try to break into it. I parked up and walked over to the bigger of the two groups. Two campervans with trailers, but two men and two women. Less likely to be Mad Max than four blokes!

They watched me walk over and I said ‘Good morning, will my car be ok if I park here whilst I do some prospecting’? They responded positively and one of the men said, ‘bring it over next to ours and people will think you’re part of our group’.

Star folk.

They asked me how long I would be so they would start a search if I didn’t show. Salt of the earth. I set off and walked over the first creek bed.

I detected whilst walking over a distance of a mile or so, finding the ubiquitous shotgun pellets and the occasional bullet. It was hot. Sorry to harp on but we’d had a couple of days respite from the heat and now it had come back.

I have to wear heavy boots for protection, and thick long trousers to protect my legs from spiky bushes, aggressive insects and snakes. The snakes aren’t out and about at this time of year because 30c is too cold for them to wander around. But if you disturb one at rest the thickness of your trousers could save your life. The teeth on the brown snake are relatively short. And they don’t always inject. But this sensible heavy protection makes your bottom, feet, legs and genitalia very hot and sweaty. And stinky. (Ok thanks Dave that’s enough).

Very stinky. Running in sweat, dripping off anything that dangles. (Ok mate, there could be kids watching). And the pong at night when you take…(ENOUGH)!

I’d been going for a couple of hours when I crossed another creek bed. I detected along it for a way but I wanted to get further away from any roads, so I walked up the far bank and carried on detecting, through some old gold workings, and across to a gentle slope.

It looked good land and I felt positive detecting at the bottom of the slope.

I disturbed an ants’ nest, only a small one, and carried on detecting. The next minute a few Bull Ants turned up to defend their tiny cousins.

And all of a sudden they were all over me. Dirty, evil, Bull Ant bastaaards. I flicked off a load before they bit or stung me, but one of them sneaked up my right trousers leg and bit, then stung me. The pain is ridiculous. Wasp sting x10. Christ!

I hit my trousers until I knew it was dead. Then I legged it away from his mates and flicked off two or three persistent buggers who were crawling over my arms and chest. My temperature rose quickly, my lower leg swelled and I felt weak. I worked my way back to the campsite, slowly but steadily.

One of the women looking after my car had some anti-bull ant ointment and offered it to me, as I was looking a bit fatigued. It worked a treat. The swelling went down and the pain eased substantially. Brilliant!

I felt that I didn’t want to go back in the bush, so I got in the car and drove back towards base. After half an hour I felt better and I thought I should at least try an hour or so detecting on the way back. So I pulled into the eastern part of the Redbank Reserve.

The usual stuff and no gold. The fourth day on the trot. Bugger!

However the swelling of my leg due to the bite and the sting, the bastaaards can do both at the same time, was still subdued by the magic anti-venom. Hooraaay!

Back to Moonambel and an early night. A disappointing day, but I am still up for the challenge.

Then I saw a BBC report that night.

If I’d caught the ant and jettisoned all my gold, I would have been better off. Bugger!!!

Night night.

Today was the most perfect weather for climbing up and down whilst detecting for gold. Cool with a fair breeze. Lovely. After breakfast I had to move rooms due to a wedding this weekend, then I set off up to Redbank and parked in the usual spot.

I decamped, turned right and walked a mile along a roller coaster of a track before turning uphill and following a steep, ancient creek bed.

The creek bed was dry nowadays and there were old gold workings on either side.

It wound up higher and steeper, and I kept digging nails and chunks of iron from the creek bed. It took around twenty minutes digging each time to dislodge the target. It was exhausting work. And each time it wasn’t gold.

High and wild, or Joker?

How good is ‘The Stranger Song’? Try the handle of the road. Don’t be afraid.

As I climbed further the stronger the wind blew and the higher my spirits soared. I was absolutely loving this. All men of 71 years old in the UK should be required by law to get out here, hire a detector and climb this mountain whilst waving it about. The detector.

There are a lot of burnt out areas where fires have ravaged the forest. The eucalyptus trees have so much spirit in their core that the centre burns out and some of the outer layer remains. In fact the remains remain.

I worked around the workings near the summit. Mountain is better than hill and summit is better than top. This, officially, is a mountain. And I officially failed to find gold around its summit.

This isn’t the outback. It’s not too remote and desolate for that. This is the bush. Even though these mountains are in a wine growing region this is still the bush. The Australian bush refers to the country’s natural, uncultivated landscapes, primarily characterized by eucalyptus forests, woodlands, and native flora. So there.

And first thing in the morning walking under the eucalyptus trees the scent is stunning. I crush the leaves between my fingers and smell the oil all day. There are some white birds, I think they are parakeets of some type, that screech incredibly loudly when you enter their area. They swoop around, screaming to scare you away.

But there are weird noises. Sounding like a Moog synthesiser. So weird it doesn’t sound as if the source is living. And then there is whistling that sounds like a bloke whistling. When you don’t see anyone all day and you’re in an airless, silent forest, the sound of a bloke whistling at a near distance is unnerving until you get used to it.

Then there’s someone talking, possibly down a mobile phone. It is too quiet to locate, or to distinguish the words, but too loud not to be someone, or something which once was a living bloke.

Avanti!

I detected round to the end of the workings, which ended with a deep pit that would be difficult to escape from. Best not to fall down it in the first place, daft get.

I decided to go back a bit of a longer way round. My car was due west down the mountain, but the summit ran along a ridge to the north. I followed it. There was a lot of quartz on the ground so I kept detecting.

Then, after half a mile, I dropped down to the west, down another creek bed. Slowly, detecting as far as I could, until I had to use my hands to clamber down. A genuine gold mine opened below me, and I climbed down to it. Amazing.

Then I started to detect around it. And a massive half an hour extraction ensued.

The result was the brown piece of iron looking like a curly turd two feet south of my detector perched on a rock in the photo below.

I made my way back to the car, detecting on the way. Shotgun pellets all the way.

Hay siempre un mañana.

Night night.

Thanks Neil. Well the ‘gold rush’ was two days ago when I got four pieces in a day. The ‘after’ was yesterday, thanks Paul, when I got bugger all. Today I was going down to the huge pile of quartz and sandstone, not far from the pub, where I had already found two pieces. I would give it a go.

I woke tired and didn’t rally. It was warm, approaching hot. Breakfast was profuse, approaching brilliant.

Up the road I wandered, and set about detecting on the top of the pile of rocks lurking in the background.

After three hours nix, nowt, nada. I went over the back and dropped down to where I had found my biggest nugget the previous week. After three more hours I conceded that it wasn’t there.

Stu had been doing up his garden, cutting the yuccas back and laying rocks around them. I filled the car with chunks of quartz and took them back to the ranch. They looked good round the base of the plants. Just needs to collect a few himself in his Ute.

No gold today. Night night.

And hello.

I was up early after the second day without gold, and decided to head up to Castlemaine again. The weather was much cooler and I worked the area we had been in at Campbell’s Creek where I had found four little nuggets on the previous trip. Within two minutes I had my first hit.

And it was to be my last.

I left at 13.00 and drove to Maryborough, on the way back to Moonambel, where I extended my metal detector contract at Coiltek, washed my dirty skiddies (again), filled up with petrol and had a late lunch.

I’m tired. Loving this adventure though. Whilst the temperature is low I’ll do some detector-climbing tomorrow more locally. Love those mountains.

Night night.

Thanks Alex. This blog title has nothing to do with Australia, gold hunting, Moonambel or this trip. It’s just a great, great track which is best seen on video at the Ragnarock festival. Amazing.

I’m back local to Moonambel today, driving up to Redbank Reserve, leaving the car and walking westwards for a change. There are some old workings there that I’ve been advised to detect. Say no more.

It’s a bit of a walk, but the weather was just hot, not scorching or searing, just hot, hot, hot.

I covered a kilometre and then veered off to the left (southwards) to some workings and spent a couple of fruitless hours down there next to the fence of the private land marked by the area of light green on the map above.

Sorry friends. The blog has reached capacity. I’ll sort it out tomorrow.

Night night.