Damien is coming to the rescue today. Again. And Ian might be popping in too. We’re meeting on a Reserve near Castlemaine, about 90 minutes east of here. I set off at 6.30 and stopped in Avoca for a cup of tea and a bacon and egg muffin. Both grim. At 8.15 I drove into Campbell’s Creek and followed Damien’s directions up to the goldfield. And there he was.

Damien explained that we were prospecting on public land, but that a bloke across the creek, around 500 metres away, had put up Private Land signs. When Ian had continued to detect on this land he had turned up with a rifle, shot over his head, threatened to kill him and then called the police to charge him with trespassing. The coppers had turned up and Ian had to prove that the land was public land.

Another bleeding nutter like Bill. The coppers had made him move the Private Land signs back to his property.

We went into the forest and Damien repeated his instructions to improve my detecting. Then he showed me where to go. The ground was great, not much dry moss and only an inch down to hard clay. Within an hour I’d got another nugget.

Then Damien was chopping away into the ground around 30 metres from me.

More bloody shotgun pellets.

Ian arrived as I was chopping into the clay. I was pleased because he saw me find another little nuggie. He’s a very experienced prospectors and he played a trick on me. He hid these three huge nuggets, together worth around £25,000, and directed me over them. When the detector went berserk I knew it was a trick and laughed as he revealed his career best finds.

Prospectors take chunks of quartz with gold in and crush them with a heavy hammer inside a metal shell case. The final result is gold amid a residue of crushed rock, that can be panned to free the gold. Ian showed me some, suspended in water.

It’s so nice to be with friends who want to help me. I’ve only met Ian once and Damien three times but they want me to be successful. Top blokes.

Ian left and Damien was packing up. He’d left home at 5am and was buggered. I’d found two more pieces of gold, bringing my total for today to four pieces. Yes!!!

And my overall total to eight.

I gave Damien a hug and thanked him profusely. We are unlikely to meet again but we’ll maintain a friendship.

On the way back to Moonambel I stopped near Maryborough where a local called Billy had shown me a spot six years ago.

I found it and couldn’t resist detecting a bit more but the temperature was 35C and I only managed an extra hour. No more gold.

I got back to the pub after a quick Thai meal in Maryborough and sat with my mates. It was still light but the bar was shut, although my mates turned up there for the company with their own beers!

This is Brian. Salt of the earth Aussie bloke. Uncomplicated and kind.

This is Serge. He lives in the pub and keeps scorpions in a tank in his bedroom. Uncomplicated, vulnerable, kind and very decent.

I like both of them a lot.

Night night.

Thanks Ray.

I got up early, rattled down a Stu breakfast and headed for the secret location that Trevor had divulged to me last night, in a very conspiratorial manner.

I can’t tell you where it is but if you head up to Landsborough Nature Reserve, turn right towards Barkly, turn right to Barkly Church and right again on to Stewart’s Road you’ll find it. Unfenced ground on the left about two miles down, full of old timer workings. It went on for a mile and was about 400 metres wide. Enormous.

The church I passed on the way was just fabulous.

Would they welcome Sheffield Satanists?

I’m not a Satanist by the way. I find it all very silly. On the other hand some of the most decent people I’ve worked with, or known, have been deeply religious. And when I was in a very serious condition in hospital, with a skull fracture and brain bleed, my neighbour’s Mosque prayed for me. You don’t forget things like that.

Anyway, I got to the secret location, that I want you all to swear to keep secret, and I stopped and it looked like a forest of gold.

And just as I was getting out of the car to crank up my detector a truck came along this very remote track. He slowed down to clock me and I walked over to him.

‘Scuse me mate’ this is me by the way ‘is it permissible to detect on these old workings here?’

‘It’s private land and although there isn’t a fence around it that’s because it’s been pushed over.’

I buggered off. Then drove up into Landsborough. Past the little house on the prairie.

And on down to the Reserve. I hope it eases up a bit from this heat. I walked up to the old workings here and identified an area I wanted to detect. It took me half an hour to clear off the old leaves and fallen branches, because……… same old story……….because it was frickin hot. Not English hot. Proper hot, for autumn.

I had 15 metres of paracord and laid it out so that I would detect within a metre next to it, and then move it over for the next pass.

It was a painstaking detect because I like wandering without discipline. But it’s worth a try. To find the tiny bits of gold, that are all that’s left here.

More to clear!

Then I staked the next section out.

No luck. No gold all day. Boooo!!! Sorry to keep saying it but I was too hot. I packed up and made it back to the car, and drove over to Avoca to get food and drink for Monday, when the pub is shut.

Then I went down the road to the Pyrenees Pie shop.

A cup of tea and a crocodile pie was six quid. And the crocodile pie was the best. It is a lovely meat.

I drove back to Moonambel, chilled, had a coupla beers and went to bed. And so should you.

Night night.

Don’t know what it means but they say it a lot. Let’s google it! It means I absolutely agree.

One of Stu’s super bacon and egg breakfasts and I was away again. Moonambel means ‘hollow in the hills’ in the aboriginal language, as it is lodged down in the valley between the Northern Pyrenees running up to the Kara Kara park, and the Southern Pyrenees running down towards Ballarat. The Pyrenees are towards the southern end of the Great Dividing Range, which runs the length of Australia from North to South, just inland from the coast. The yellow bits are the Great Dividing Range and the Red Cross is where I’m sat in the hollow in the hills.

So, as it is a hollow in the hills, over millions of years the reefs of quartz, which were pushed up in a molten state from the earth’s core, have been exposed to the world on the slopes of these mountains through natural erosion. The quartz just happens to contain bits of gold. In fact they can be very big bits. The biggest ever, found 30 miles from where I’m sitting, weighed 109 kg. That’s more than a fat bastaaard like me. At today’s price that little nuggie would be worth £11.5m.

The exposed quartz becomes dislodged and falls down the mountain, shedding its gold which ends up at Moonambel in the hollow. So I was going just up the road again. This pile of rock is tailings from a massive, mechanised gold extraction operation near Moonambel which churned out tonnes of gold in the 1970s and 1980s. I hope they left little pieces in this pile.

It is hot. I mean very hot. Hey ho.

After a couple of hours of detecting, releasing shotgun pellets and bits of iron from the pile, I was jiggered. And as a reward Theia gave me a tiny flake.

It is so great to find a piece of gold. Just wonderful. The value isn’t relevant. It’s the chase. That’s what makes you feel mighty real. Thanks Sylvester.

I couldn’t quit and worked up, down and around this huge mound of pebbles, way into the afternoon. But Theia didn’t shine any more.

Even the eucalyptus trees surrendered, and so did I. I went back to the pub and met Trevor.

Trevor is a seasoned, highly experienced, knowledgeable and successful gold detectorist. I plied him with beer (well only one) and he told me the location of a secret place which will open Theia’s door and let me float home on a pile of gold, Gold I tell you!!

And I’m going down there tomorrow morning. Secretly.

Hoooraay!

Night night.

It’s difficult to remember where I’ve detected each day. It’s hot, in the 30s again today. It tires me out when I’m hacking piles of rocks and solid ground, for hours on my knees in supplication to Theia, a beautiful, oracular Greek goddess believed to be the radiance found in gold. Tell me, most powerful of oracles, where will I find the most gold today? Sharing this foresight is well within your capability, but will you concede to my humble entreaty?

No. So I’ll just have to bloody guess, again. I’m up early and off back to McDermid Reserve near Talbot. It was clear as a bell last night. There are two lads who live in the pub and do odd jobs for Stu, the owner. They pointed out the Southern Cross to me in the jet black night sky, outshone by the Milky Way as clear as if we were in a desert. And in a strange kind of way we are.

Daddy, was Jesus a goalie?

And in a strange kind of way you know, he was.

Thanks Billy.

The clear, cold night left a legacy of mist in the valleys as the sun rose.

When the day breaks, over roof slates, hope hung on every washing line. Thanks Richard. Dawn really is a calm and majestic display of rejuvenation.

Unlike this ancient baaastard.

Back to McDermid, a 45 minute drive today. At least in the light I have a good chance of seeing a Kangaroo before it jumps through the windscreen. They are unpredictable and there are hourly driving restrictions at night in some areas because so many die in road accidents. And you need to check your insurance small print too.

They are much more graceful and less dangerous at a distance.

I wasn’t up for it today. I felt weak and drained, but I parked my car a mile from the Reserve and walked in the heat down the dead end road.

The reason being that at the bottom of the road is the Reserve on the left and a complete and utter ex-convict nutter called Bill living next to it. He doesn’t like prospectors and makes life difficult on occasions. Well Bill, I’ve got a nasty turn of phrase when the mood takes me and it can be hurtful, so choose your weapons.

I knew of this bloke’s reputation, and he had a Ute parked outside his ramshackle house so I knew he was there. But I found gold here last week and I had the Right to detect again. But I didn’t want him to damage the car so I was happy to leave it safe and walk.

There isn’t much ozone, so the sun burns your skin quickly, and the sky colour shifts slightly towards purple during the day.

And it gets frickin hot.

There are lots of old workings here. My heart wasn’t in it. I struggled.

More workings.

There are different types of workings, but they all date from around the 1850s to 1870s. They dug down and piled up the waste outside the hole, creating a mullock heap. The old timers didn’t have detectors so they couldn’t find all the gold in the rocks and soil they dug out and threw into the mullock heaps. So sad folk like me detect around them and find the small pieces that slipped through the net.

I didn’t find any. And when my attention to the noise of the detector wanes, then it’s less likely that I will find gold. The sound generated by small gold is almost imperceptible. Detect slowly, overlap strokes and pay attention.

I burnt out by 15.00. Physically and mentally out of it. Walking back to the car I hoped Bill didn’t decide to be silly. And he didn’t.

I went straight back home, showered, ate and slept.

Night night

It was going to be warm today so I wanted to be close enough to base, but high enough to get some air. The static heat, whilst dry at the moment, was a devil to work in. Not a breath of air under the eucalyptus trees.

I decided to climb the mountain that I had been up a few days ago and try the workings over the back. Not many people would want to venture up there and I might have a chance. It might not be too exploited.

An old local in the pub last night said that we need to keep having adventures because life is like a roll of toilet paper, it goes faster towards the end.

I parked up on Redbank Nature Conservation Reserve.

It’s going to be a hot one!

On the way up I stopped at some workings and got a very strong signal. It took twenty minutes digging with my pick.

Then I pulled out this 1834 One Shilling coin, King William IV. And carrying on it was a slog 1200 feet up the mountain in this heat with my gear.

But I made the top in good time.

I walked over the top to the other side and dropped down off the ridge to some old workings. Very deep ones at first.

And I was straight onto a target in the large mullock heap. Nearly half an hour digging this time. Big old iron nail.

Moving along under the ridge to the shallower workings straight away I was on a target. Bingo!

This is small stuff and I need to ramp things up if I’m going to hit taaaget! I spent the rest of the afternoon making my way down the mountainside waving my detector. So far, except when Damien came over, I haven’t seen anyone during the day. Nobody.

This isn’t the outback, it’s barely the bush, but it’s quite remote. The views down on the farmland look like Derbyshire, but this is Oz. It’s different. It’s underpopulated.

Yorkshire, the Peak District, Scotland and Cornwall are in my heart. Oz couldn’t be. But I’m loving this experience, and finding gold is the fulfilment of a dream.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great and very different place, and beautiful in its emptiness. And I’m deliberately out of the cities, with their more sophisticated attraction, but I miss something. Community and my old lass.

Night night.

I was just going up the road locally today, less than a mile from the pub, meeting a local bloke who would show me how to get on.

I passed quite a few kangaroos driving up and this time they were on the far side of a fence.

I got up there before Torey and walked down past the ponds to a quarry. After half an hour I desperately needed a poo, and legged it back to the car, passing Torey’s parked car on the way up. He was off detecting and I thought I’d look him up on the way back. By the time I’d de-pooed and returned Torey was away. Nevertheless I walked down to the quarry and this time decided to detect over the back.

Down on both knees I was picking away at a target when I spotted the outer shell of a scorpion. Glad the occupant shuffled off its mortal coil. Or just moved into a new home.

It was hot and I’m so glad to have the Camelbak to keep me hydrated. The area was peppered with holes already dug by other prospectors, so my expectations were low. And any targets I dug up were small shotgun pellets. I slogged away, detecting, digging, detecting, digging ad infinitum. Well, not infinitely because I was only there for 7 hours, but a lot. A very lot. For a normal bloke this idiotic little ritual, thanks Basil, would be soul destroying, but for me at the moment it’s cathartic.

And so was this!

I was delighted. Two in two days. In the middle of this heavily detected area. It’s tempting to think that I’m getting good. The reality is that I’m a ‘Tin Arse’, a lucky bloke in Australian English. Tin Arse, Tin Arse, Tin Arse, Tin Arse, Tin Arse. If anyone has played ‘Given to the Wild’, being an album by the Maccabees, you will recognise the five times repetition of lyrics. Or maybe it’s four times recognition of lyrics from the initial lyric. Is lyrics singular lyric, like bird, or lyrics, like fish?

Nevertheless it is one of my top five albums of all time, and I’m going to see them in Leeds in July, with my beautiful daughter Georgie, and beautiful son-in-law Adam. Is it son-in-laws like birds? Or sons-in-law like fish?

Anyway – HOORAAAY!!!

Bigger than yesterday’s, much heavier.

Looking bigger in the container too.

However, I carried on detecting and digging. There is loads of vegetation on the surface. There are a load of vegetations. There is…… Oh bugger it! Loads of leaves and stuff on the surface. I wanted to clear the area around my new discovery to enable a full, clean detection of the entire slope. It was hot, so bloody hot as I pulled fallen trees, branches and bushes out of the way. It took half an hour and then I started to detect. An aroma.

Only kidding. I started to detect the slope. Systematically. For another half hour but no joy. Only shotgun pellets.

Then I moved on, as the sun did too. Is it, ‘as the Sun did too’ in this context? I detected along a dry creek bed, then climbed etc, thanks Eno, up on to the valley floor that the creek bed had cut through.

Again there was a mountain of vegetation, so I pulled a fallen tree out of the way, and then I froze. I spotted a broad, lengthy, dark brown, scaly head, with a body covered by leaves. I uttered an oath as the head recoiled. It sounded like ‘a duck in hell’.

I moved backwards slowly, away from what I thought to be a deadly brown snake. As I retreated and realised I wasn’t going to be bitten in a reaction to the tree removal, I noticed that the diameter of the neck was much bigger than I would expect of a snake. But I kept retreating. The leaf cover over the body wasn’t long. A snake would be buried in a deeper pile of leaves, surely referee? Later, regulars in the pub confirmed that this was a Shingleback lizard.

I carried on roaming with the detector for a couple more hours. Is it ‘a couple of more hours’?

Nowt. Nowt I tell you. So I returned to Moonambel, showered off the day’s dust and had a lovely fish and chip dinner.

A really good day.

Night night.

Today I set off in the dark at 06.30 (without breakfast) to drive to the Talbot goldfields. I was meeting my mentor Damien, and one of his friends, Ian a professional gold-hunter from Castlemaine.

Stu had warned me to watch out for kangaroos. When I got past Bung Bong a huge buck leaped across the road in front of me, causing me to slam on the anchors and nearly shit myself. One of those leaping buggers, illuminated by the car lights as I’m doing 50mph, is quite disconcerting, as it narrowly misses landing on your bonnet.

I made it to the McDermid Bushland Reserve by 07.10, just before Damien arrived, and as light spread over the land. He led me to the most productive area of the reserve and spent the first half an hour coaching me, watching what I was doing and giving me fantastic tips. My hero!

Then he left me alone, after pointing out the likeliest gold producing spots. And within an hour, using his improvements to my technique, I got this! My first Aussie gold.

I wasn’t certain that it was gold and I took it to Damien for verification. He used his magnifying glass to confirm it was small, but perfectly formed Aussie, frickin gold. Gold I tell you!!! I was so happy.

Then Ian arrived. He gave me some great advice. A real gent.

We moved up to Nuggety Gully, but it wasn’t any good and, as Damien, me and Ian had all found gold, we decided it was time to split. Damien had been up at the same time as me, and with the warmth it becomes tiring.

I’ll see Damien next week. Today I need to do some housekeeping in Maryborough.

Washed the skiddies.

Bought some provisions.

Washed the car.

KFC for breakfast at 15.30. I parked facing towards the traffic on a proper parking spot for 15 minutes last Friday in Maryborough whilst I bought fish and chips. Sixt contacted me to let me know I got an electronic parking ticket.

Back at Moonambel the bar regulars were delighted with my find. Let’s get some more!

Night night.

It’s the highest point on the south coast of England. I’ve climbed it twice and it’s a bugger when you’re carrying a rucksack. Today I’m carrying a fair weight up the highest point in the Redbank Nature Reserve to find gold. Amazing analogy? Carefully crafted comparison? Pretentious prattle?

Any road, Stu cooked breakfast at 8.30 this morning and I pushed off an hour later. Just a short drive, around two miles, north to Redbank. Then a steep and lengthy five hour climb, detecting on the way where I could. Aiming for the summit, marked by the Red Cross.

It was raining. I liked it. It was cooler. I loved it. The forest felt greener as a result. It would rain for the rest of the day.

I climbed and I climbed. All the way up were periodic gold workings from the 1850s. The key to gold is quartz. Where we find reefs of quartz we can find gold, and there was plenty of quartz on the surface.

However as I climbed higher the gold workings became deeper and deeper, until one was so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. It had to be at least twenty metres deep. One slip and you don’t get out.

The mullock heaps around these workings were huge, like mini-colliery slag heaps, but cleaner. I realised that the quartz reefs were deeper underground and that the quartz that I had seen on the surface had been brought up from below and run down the mountain from these mullock heaps, over the last hundred and seventy years. This meant that the gold would not be lying about on the surface. It was down below.

I thought that if I climbed higher the reefs might come up, or there may be other reefs close to the surface. I was right. As I climbed up towards the summit the workings became shallower and the mullock heaps lower.

I detected all the way up. Without any gold. But loads of shotgun pellets, bullets and old timers’ nails. Again. At the top the views were great, if a bit cloudy.

Over the back of the summit the ground fell away even more steeply.

And incredibly there were gold workings on the top and most of the way down. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t cop some gold. There were quartz reefs appearing down the side of the mountain as I slid down.

I followed a gully, using my detector on the descent. Towards the bottom the gully became too steep, so I climbed up over a ridge to the west and dropped down a more manageable slope. It was still raining and I was comfortable with the freshness of it. Reaching a track I turned westwards and walked on a winding uphill and downdale route back to the car. No gold yet, but a wonderful day of exercise in decent weather conditions. I was soaked!

I’ve collected a lot of scrap from the old timers. This is just a small part of it.

Tomorrow might be the day!

Night night.

It’s Sunday the 15th of March and I am going to find gold. If you are bored with the repetitive nature of this blog then bugger off. Because it’s not going to have any broader scope than this – gold, Gold I tell you, GOLD!!!!!

Today Stu conjured up fried eggs, two spicy sausages and bacon on toast for breakfast. It keeps me going for the full day. The pub is fed water by a bore hole, so we can’t drink the tap water, but he leaves jugs of drinking water lying around within easy reach.

Back to Landsborough today and it was clear and sunny. I parked up on the main road again but the Reserve was a couple of miles away. A slog with my gear and long, heavy trousers.

It took me an hour to get up to the Reserve and I decided to head eastwards, along the low line of the hills, towards some old gold workings.

These areas have been detected probably hundreds of times. I didn’t find anything. Nevertheless I am learning each trip. I know that these workings, in more remote areas, are well worth detecting around. And you never know. I might strike lucky.

I wandered around the gold workings, making my way gradually south westwards into the hills. I followed a dry gully and had three strong signals in succession. Three shotgun cartridges including one which hadn’t been detonated. I chucked it away. Be a bit painful if it went off in me trouser pocket!

There was clearly a lot of gold found here by the old timers in the 1850s, judging by the extent of the workings. It’s not only people who make workings. Ants do too but this revealed diddly squat.

This is a Puddling machine that horses drew around to separate fine gold from the clay. Apart from the trees growing in the outer walkway it looked usable nowadays!

These features were on the lower slopes. I decided to head higher into the hills through the forest to see if I could find any quartz reefs on the surface that might contain (or have released) some gold.

It’s very isolated here. I haven’t seen anybody all day and I don’t think anyone would be here for anything other than sad Pommies popping over to try to teach the locals how to detect gold. And fail miserably. And some of these workings feel spookie.

I cut directly uphill, not too far from private land on the way up and I crossed it to take this shot towards where I was prospecting in the forest yesterday.

Nipping back into the Reserve I cut eastwards along the side of the hills to see if I could find any evidence of quartz reefs which might contain gold. Detecting along the way the only beeps were bullets from the old timers.

The heat was ratcheting up to over 30c and with no wind I was beginning to sink, as the sun decided to start doing the same.

Someone had been camping in the park and had left evidence of a fire. A bit risky in a forest of eucalyptus. Fire spreads here faster than you can run.

Tony the trainer had said that he often finds gold under this type of tree. Bully for him. I din’t.

So a long two mile slog carrying my gear and I was back at my car, straight to Moonambel and a couple of VB stubbies with spicy chicken strips. Asleep by eight. Knackered but not dejected. I will find gold.

Night night.

No it isn’t the 26th of January but it feels like a recurring theme. No gold so far.

Great breakfast in the Moonambel Resort Hotel; bacon, eggs and mushrooms on toast. Perfect. Served by the owner, Stu. He was a good sport and had been invited to a hen party’s breakfast. Good lad!

I set off for Landsborough Nature Conservation Reserve at 10 am in the morning, hundred hours. It looks small but it isn’t.

I found a place to park the car on the main road. Sadly the car hire lease doesn’t allow me to drive on tracks. If I do and it get’s stuck then it’s quite expensive. But walking is my pleasure.

Walking up into the Reserve I saw some old gold workings from the 1850s over to my left, and had a detect around them. Lots of targets but all bullets or nails.

The weather was clear and hot. By 13.00 the temperature was pushing 28C. The bush was becoming breathless. At this level of breathlessness it’s difficult to keep swinging the detector, then slicing down through hard earth with the pick, and then using the scoop to whittle down the source of the BEEP!

There was nobody here.

I made my way slowly up towards the hills and then I came across an old dam. I detected around it but only old timers’ metal.

I thought this was gold as I got quite deep. Morefool I.

Distant views in the bush are quite rare. Australia is mostly flat and covered in forest or desert, like this.

I’ve got a Camelbak. It’s a rucksack which takes all my gear and a plastic sack full of water with a tube so that when I’m digging away in the heat I can suck water out of the back. Lifesaver!This bloke didn’t have a camelbak.

The day wore on and I wore out. The pub is closed on Monday so I wrapped up at around 16.30 and trekked back down to the car. Avoca is the nearest village of any size so I headed there to buy some food for Monday, as well as bog-roll, which appears to be in short supply.

Back to Moonambel, an early dinner and an early night as a group of young women rolled in and cranked up the jukebox. Nevertheless it didn’t keep me awake.

Night night.