A Fond Farewell To Redbank Mountain

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.