photos

The following photographs were taken by myself . They show what it is like to go prospecting for gold in West Australia and what you have to endure in the search for gold nuggets.
The latest photos taken will now be shown first.



My father above and below May2005 camped out on the goldfields and one of the most spectacular sunsets I have seen.

	Driving through breakaway country May 2005 - lots of quartz but no gold!


	Heidi on a hill above our camp, same camp as in sunset above, in fact this was taken just as the sun set but before the sky turned red.


	The best rainbow I have ever seen over a salt lake (notice other faint ones too!) Unfortunately I could only get a fraction of it in the photo. Was there a pot of gold at the end of it? Yes, there sure was - see my 'muddy hole patch' below!
	My sister on her quad with Jessie
The Muddy Hole Patch Right - A small area of only about 3 metres x 3 metres I recently found on a salt lake where there were no indications of gold ever having been found before. There were no significant outcrops and no old diggings. My first signal was a faint small bit then I realised there was another faint signal next to it. If I had swung my detector around a bit I would have realised that the ground around was full of signals! This turned out to be the densest patch of gold (nuggets per square inch!) I ever found on a salt lake. This lake was very wet and every hole dug quickly filled with water.
The water was freezing cold and my hands became numb as I tried to sort tiny nuggets out of the mud. The problem was that if a small nugget became free of the mud it would drop to the bottom of the water filled hole and I had a hell of a job finding it and often the hole became deeper and deeper as I tried to scoop out the wet mud from the bottom. To complicate it, usually more than one bit came up in a handful of mud! My hands became sore and cut as I tried to scrape the bottom with my bare hands. The mud was full of sharp gypsum crystals.
The total tally for detectable bits was 120 bits (5 ozs) with many bits having gypsum crystals still firmly attached (see photo) yet no quartz or other rock as you would expect if the gold was shedding from the bedrock. The largest piece was 8 grams. I tried panning a couple of dishes of the mud and found to my surprise 0.1 - 0.2 gram bits I had missed but no fine gold. The whole patch needs to be gone over again when drier and then panned off, but I will wait for warmer weather!

	A camp without shade so we use tarps between the vehicles and over the tents. That's me on the hill collecting the firewood.

Going to dig up some signals.
Digging up more gold on an old patch. The holes in the front are old holes, the holes with the mounds in the middle are fresh holes. About 60% of the fresh holes had nuggets, the rest were just false mineralisation signals.

That's a 5 gram nugget sitting on the surface which Steve is pointing to. That's me with it in my hand. It is not uncommon to find nuggets sitting on the surface like this. Sometimes a big nugget will just have a small edge protruding above the surface and you never know how big it is going to be, a bit like an iceberg!

	Steve looking not so fresh! This time he comes out in summer and after only 6 days in 40'C he is feeling the heat! - note all the flies and the burnt nose! :o)
Yes that is me! A temperature this day of 46'C and the only way I can keep cool is to drape a wet sheet over myself! Was it worth it?
	Some nuggets found January 2003