Closer To Home Alone

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.