A week after Ed found the 73 ounce
“Bear Hug Nugget” we shifted to a goldfield which we had never detected
before. We spent a few hours driving around the goldfield, trying to become
familiar with its tracks and looking at any diggings or tell-tale rocks. We
never saw another detector operator. Some of the tracks were very steep and the
3 litre turbo diesel Patrol struggled until I put it in low range. I missed the
low down grunt of my old 4.2 litre Patrol. We were relaxed. We already had more
than out share of gold and any other nuggets would be a bonus. Detecting is more
enjoyable when there is no pressure and you can enjoy the bush around you. I am
constantly thinking while I am detecting and I don’t get bored. I am trying to
work out the best areas to run a detector over. I survey the surrounding
landscape taking note of lots of little signs that add up to an overall picture.
Generally, the longer you spend in an area and become familiar with it, the
clearer the picture becomes. What can confuse the issue is when a number of
operators have been there before you. Then you have to stretch the old brain
cells and try and work out where others haven’t been before you. If you think
they may have been all over the place then detector and coil choice becomes
especially critical. You have to work smarter and detect more carefully.
The next morning we parked the vehicle
and got our detectors out. It was a noisy area so I fitted the Coiltek 17” DD
pro coil to my GP 3000. It wasn’t heavy and had good depth and covered the
ground faster than a 14” DD round coil. It also pin pointed better and you
could fit it in tight places. I had done some comparisons with my GP 3000
against Ed’s excellent GP Extreme. In quiet ground Ed’s GP Extreme matched
it, but it was the best Extreme I had ever tested . In heavily mineralised, noisy
ground it was a different story—The GP 3000 went a few cms deeper and ground
balanced a bit smoother.
We had no idea what to expect. According
to old mining records, the area was not particularly rich. Ed poked around with
his detector closer to the vehicle but I went walking in a more or less
southerly direction, occasionally detecting as I went.
Fifteen minutes later I was nearly half a kilometer away from the car and
decided to detect a small area which looked a little more promising although I
was far from confident I would find gold there. It was a new goldfield for us
and we were just testing it. It didn’t look as if other operators had done
much work there.
Immediately, I got a very large signal
but it wasn’t a surface signal. Whenever I get a deep signal in virgin ground
I become hopeful. But was this virgin ground? It looked undisturbed, but I
wasn’t 100% sure and I was aware that if the ground had been turned over, a
piece of junk could have been buried underneath. I swung the pick and dug a hole
9 inches deep and 18 inch wide. The pick started to bounce off some fist- sized
partly worn rocks. I prised them out and ran my favourite DD coil over the hole.
The signal was becoming much louder but the target was still down quite a bit
deeper. I knew there was a great possibility of it being a big nugget but the
big size of the target made me doubtful. We already had a 73 ounce nugget in the
bag and surely this couldn’t be another big one! By the way, it’s
interesting that when you are towing a van with a 73 ounce nugget in the back,
it seems to make you drive more carefully. If you had an accident you wouldn’t
want the nugget to spill out on the road which is strange when you consider how
much more precious our lives and limbs are than gold.
I deepened and widened the hole. It was well over a foot deep now, but the signal seemed to indicate I still had another six or nine inches to dig. Throwing caution to the winds, I ripped the pick into the hole and after removing a few more inches or rocks and dirt a large flat dirty yellow object flicked out of the hole and landed between my feet. I had made the mistake of hitting the target! My first thoughts were, “Surely it couldn’t be gold! Is it a chunk of molten brass?”
I picked it up and it was heavy for its size, very heavy and the size of a hand and about 2cms thick. I was highly excited and rubbed the dirt off the object and put my reading glasses on. Suddenly the blurry yellow object changed into a beautiful gold nugget and I found myself enjoying one of the most amazing prospecting experiences of my life. It’s difficult to describe how I felt. I was stunned, excited and grateful. I sat under the shade of a tree and examined the nugget. It looked different—it was shinier than normal. I called Ed on the little Uniden two-way radio. “Hey, Ed, you’d better come over and have a look at this.”
“What is it?” he wanted to know.
“Something like yours,” I said cautiously, in case someone was scanning, listening in.
“What! I’ll be right over.”
I gave Ed directions and he drove about
100 metres toward me and got out of the car and looked around. He couldn’t
find me and called me on the radio. I told him he hadn’t driven far enough.
Well Ed then found me and asked me what I had found. “A nugget,” I said.
“Where
is it?” he wanted to know, looking at my pockets.
“It won’t fit in my pocket Ed, it’s in the backpack” I said, noting Ed’s astonished look.
When Ed saw the nugget he said passionately, “Gee that’s terrific! Fancy finding another big one.”
I said, “Looks like Margaret was wrong about us not finding another one. It looks like it was meant to be.”
“But that’s amazing,” Ed said. “We just got here and you walked all that way straight onto it.”
“Might have been an invisible hand guiding me,” I said happily but seriously.
“Well there’s got to be more gold
around that big one.” Ed said.
We started to grid the area. Within minutes I found a 1 gram fragment of gold which looked like it might have broken of the big one ages ago. But after that we couldn’t find another nugget although we spent a few days gridding the spot. This was truly strange because normally, when we find a big nugget, there’s more gold around, sometimes just a few nuggets but more often over a dozen. The amazing thing was that we came to a new goldfield and I walked straight onto the biggest nugget I had ever found and it was a magnificent crystalline nugget. I guessed its weight at 20 ounces or a little more.
While detecting a nearby gully I noticed
a fairly large grey bird in the gully. It appeared to be dead with its feet
sticking up in the air. As I came closer I noticed its head was covered with
ants, and then it blinked its eye. It was being eaten alive. I brushed the ants
off and examined the tawny frogmouth whose eyes followed my every movement. It
was paralysed from the neck down and was gravely ill. My first reaction was to
put it in my back pack and take it to a vet. Suddenly it used the last of its
energies to bite my finger deeply with its sharp powerful beak, drawing blood.
These birds use their beak to kill small animals and its bite.
I put the dying bird down and put a band-aid on, which I carry for just
such emergencies. I also carry a snake-bite compression bandage as I sometimes
take risks when detecting in long grass. I sadly realized the suffering bird was
beyond recovery and ended its misery.
When we got back to camp, Margaret and Ross were just as astonished and stunned to see the nugget as we had been. Later, after a quick clean up I put it in a plastic bag and weighed it on digital scales in a fish shop. To our very pleasant surprise the nugget weighed over 1.18 kilos or 37 ounces and there was very little quartz in it, less than 15 grams probably.
The Crystalline "Providence Nugget":
1110 grams.
Size 135mm by 113 mm by 15mm thick.
Its sheer size and brilliant lustre makes it truly rare and
desirable (Photos do not do it justice!)
It has several fern leaf patterns near the edges (further close up photos can
be provided on request) and an overall unusual 'layered' appearance. It has tiny
crystalline quartz inclusions.
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