Easter time, a great time to load up the trailer, the kids and the dog, dust off the GPX-4500 and head off with the family into the Victorian golden triangle!
My mum and dad (Kev and Helen) are from the ‘Grey Nomad Army’, based out of QLD and have never detected before, but always wanted to give it a try. They are keen fishermen and enjoy ‘The thrill of the hunt’ and I suspected they would enjoy this great pastime.
The last month had seen them travelling down the coast, parking up for some time at Mallacoota for some serious ‘flathead’ chasing, eventually meeting us at our agreed upon rendezvous. The greetings at our camp were barely concluded before we had loaded the car, the dog and our digging gear, for an afternoon detect.
I quickly got us to a patch my mate ‘Wart’ and I had come across last month. When we found it, the area looked like it had been thoroughly gone over in the past, with numerous detector holes studded along the ridge line and some areas raked. Over the next couple of weeks we had pulled over ten nuggets out of the patch, with Wart digging an 8g at almost three foot down in hard ground, using his GPX 5000 with an 18”Commander coil. I had only managed a couple of small bits myself with the biggest at 4.5g, for many days of dust, flies and heat, but as the saying goes - “A bad day at detecting is still better then a good day at the office!”
This Easter afternoon, the weather was fantastic and the company was enthusiastic and keen diggers. Before long I had the GPX-4500 humming along nice and steady, with a path being raked ahead of me by dad. We had already got some nice signals, all of which belonged to pellets or lead slugs, when less than an hour into our detect, I heard the slight but unmistakable sound of a deep target signal ‘swooping’ in and out under my broad, slow swing.
”Hear that Dad? That is the sound you want to hear!” I scraped away the top inch of ground and the signal was coming through nice and loud, so it was time to get serious about digging that target.
At the foot deep mark we passed into hard, in-situ quartz and my excitement was palpable and contagious within our little group. I knew, now, that this was definitely a decent nugget! At the two foot point, we broke through into a wet, blue, clay layer. We were all hoping to be the first to spot the nugget, with the GPX ‘blanking’ whenever I poked it in the hole and I knew we would be pulling a nugget out of the hole within seconds.
When Dad next emptied the hole, my Mum let out a cry of ‘There it is!’ and sure enough, sitting on top of our dirt pile was the unmistakable gleam of gold in the dying rays of the afternoon sun. My wife was quickly by Mum’s side both of them laughing and passing the nugget back and forth, Dad and I quickly joined in with high fives and as I reached out and felt the weight I finally knew I had joined the ‘Ounce club’. What a beauty! If anyone was watching, we would have made a spectacle, whooping, high fiving and group hugging, whilst passing the nugget back and forth.
I couldn’t believe it! Mum and Dad’s very first detect, we had pulled out a nugget at least over an ounce! I kept telling them this didn’t happen all the time- that detecting can sometimes stretch your patience, but they both equated it to fishing and the thrill of the hunt, the unknown target and ultimately the success that comes with perseverance.
We checked the spot and the hole and recovered another 1g piece sitting off to the side and headed back to camp to share our experience with the kids. At the camp we had a competition guessing the weight, ranging from 39g up to 67g. Our piece ended up being 47 grams, over an ounce and half!
Needless to say mum and dad are both hooked with the next 4 days yielding another 3g in small nuggets and one nice 2g specimen piece. We have already booked our spot next year on what I expect to be a regular Easter family detecting trip, this time with two detectors, mine and theirs...
Rockdoc - VIC, Australia
