It was late December and my detecting buddy had left to visit his parents in Queensland for Christmas so i decided to go Gladstone Creek goldfields in Gippsland by myself. I had only had the GPZ 7000 for a short time and had never found any gold or anything else of interest yet.
We had been to the Gladstone Creek area a few times and the amount of ferns and scrub made it hard going when detecting the mullock heaps along the creek. This time i decided to check out one of the ridges as it was alot easier going as the ground was mostly clear of vegetation other than trees and there was no mosquito's trying to drain you of blood. I came across two mullock heaps about 50 metres apart and found a few small pieces of trash on one of the heaps and on the other i was lucky enough to find this 1800's pipe. I had my GPZ 7000 set in the factory mode as I'm still learning how to use it and heard a faint signal. I was weilding my pick without regard to what might be buried in the mulluck heap, "just more rubbish" i was thinking.
I was lucky that the round section of the pipe caught my eye before hitting it with the pick, i picked it up and put it to one side as i checked again to see if there was still a signal in the hole which there was. I checked the remaining dirt and found the other two pieces and at the time i just thought they were junk. When i arrived home i was going over the pieces i had found for the day, the section of the pipe that you put in your mouth was encrusted in hard dirt and i started picking it off when i realised that i might have found a complete pipe.
I posted a few pictures on some Facebook sites and received a great response, on the Facebook page of "Metal Detecting Australia" it received 323 likes! I didn't really apprecitate what i had found until i had seen all the respones and likes on Facebook, I am very lucky to have found such a great piece of prospect history from the 1800's.
