am back

Five years since i started this blog, now so many miles have passed and i am now living nearly 4000km away from where i started the blog. I am now on an island called Tasmania, up on the north west coast and yes still metal detecting.
I run the national distributorship for Fisher Metal detectors and study history at university now as well. Will try and restart this blog and get it up and running again.

My adventure last week to the old tennis court and hall built in 1920

Well it's January 12 2012,

Yes been a long while since i updated the blog, been busy hunting coins.
But decided to restart the blog, put coin finds on here and keep my research on this page as well
I now own  a Garrett AT Pro, is a fantastic detector, hunting in 1 to 4 inch of clay, is about  the only depth i finding  most of the coins. Its hard soil so coins dont go down very far.
I hunting daily in Merredin with 1 or 2 extended trips to far away towns each week, chasing the ever hard to find silver is the aim at the moment.

busy week

been to merredin peak each day, finding coins and bottle tops. also tried various other sites, totadgin, xmas well, but all i getting from them is pull tabs and bottle caps.
anyway below is the photos for the coins found at merredin peak

Merredin Peak reserve may 17 2011

what a day and below is my finds, a penny from 1961, a cup from 1962, a piece of bottle from bottle place in merredin aged before 1966, working on exact age still and a belt buckle maybe from 1941

Pictures from may 14 adventure,

May 14 2011, the Westonia area explorer trip

still waiting on detector to turn up, so all we can do is take photos and samples of quartz, explore this large region. be warned this is a long post
I love living in the wheatbelt on the edge of goldfields, best of both worlds - gold and relic areas.
I was studying history and geology in year 12 just over 20 years ago, A+ student for both, love both topics. i still a excellent researcher and passionate about local history.
so where to start, went to merredin library on Friday, found 3 great text books on local area, the best is the 720 page + Westonia the wheels of change a history of the district and by district they mean the whole shire and some border towns with my shire. maps of the towns from around 1915 or earlier when the towns where built, great help for finding relics and great info on how much gold was taken from the mines in the towns, where schools built and for how long, plus photos which help in position relic hunting when on site of a ruin.
other two books more helpful on other trips still to do, one is made in 1961 is the history of merredin district. great reading 200+ pages , really explains the town well, how it formed in several locations before settling where it is now. does help with my attempt to find raaf and army relics in town. the last book is Newcarnie - nukarni and surround districts 1912 to 1942 around 460 pages, mostly on road board and shire stories but helps paint picture of what happened where from deaths to buildings.
So back to today, up at 5am thanks to some idiot ringing my phone and hanging up when i answered it, just a few minutes before 5. spent next 4 hours trying to wake family, organise thermos flasks and make them breakfast.
hit the road at 9.30am, not a lot of distance planned, only 62km to sandford rocks from here, thats just north of westonia. so headed to carrabin, got their in under 20 minutes then up to westonia, 30 minutes of looking at lukes church and photos all over the town we headed the few minutes north to sandford rocks, 806 hectare reserve found by explorer hunt in 1864 and again in 65, hiding hole of moondyne joe. left wife in the car, she not well and not up to walking, so under a cold cloudy morning around 15 degrees with strong winds me and 9 year old daughter heading into the rock, wow is a great rock, they call it a rock complex as its several rocks, the view from top was breath taking. found quartz around the carpark area, about 5 minutes from it near a creek line, most of it was normal quartz some with rose tinges but one had a rose quartz look at one end and a clear glass like appearance at other end, cant remember see through quartz, not sure i found it like that before. its a gold area so i took samples.
then back to the boodalin soak west of westonia, across road from west westonia/battlefield ruins/gold digs area. after meeting my first flies for the day we head back to the car and found a small area of quartz that had been unearthed by recent road grading near carpark, 2nd samples for day taken. then took car through the scrub of west westonia, wife calls it serial killer area, she did not like the looks of the few shanty camps in their, found around 9 shanty camps in around 5km, no sign of people but heaps of signs of work under ground, is it possible they underground but dont own cars?
from their we headed to the standard gauge kalgoorlie rail line, this is in different spot by 3km or so from the narrow gauge line to kalgoorlie which took people from carabin to westonia 100 to 70 years back, found it hard to use the 1915 map of the carbin town plan with the heath and rail move, but got a rough idea after we drove up to the next town and found the tracks of the narrow gauge rail still in place, thus showing me where line pre 1970's ran to carabin. the town we where in was walgoolan, still has a town hall and several buildings still standing despite the original 100 settler families now down to only 10 families. so out came the westonia book, got the life story of the hall from it, has had more lifes than a cat over past 80 years but finally died in 1992 when basically it was a playgroup and deemed unsafe for occupation. now its a home of pidgeons but a good spot to coin hunt. next door is the tennis complex, several courts back to weeds now but the small building i guess the sign on, change area etc for club, not big enough for tennis bar, really a couple rooms and still standing, then found a cool car in a paddock, i no car expert but looks 1940's or 50's, rusted but worth a hunt around. from their we headed to rabbit proof fence carpark and then onto burracoppin, some good coin sites in the town, pub for sale they decided to retreat a kid not close to 18 came out of a house with a hunters rifle and wandered off , thought best move on before he shoots someone or something, at 2pm its a bit early for roo shooting.
then off for a change of scene to modern day, the new collgar wind farm is almost finished, i think 80 wind towers and dam they huge compared to the low forrests and wheat fields around them, then back to merredin and decided as i still dont have a ww2 map of the merredin hospital i would see who was in the merredin tourist info shop, luck had it, well i saw his bus outside, the boss and the owner of the only tourist bus service in merredin was manning the shop today. his brother in law is a metal detector from bunbury who comes to merredin every month or so, they like the ww2 hospital site but agree a map would be great but the www.awm.gov.au dont have one. it was mainly a heap of tents and a dozen or more tin/concrete buildings for hospital etc. but he said the best place they like and get to several times a year is pump station 5 which is east of carrabin, god i went north, south and west of that town and all i had to do was drive east today! the site had 11 homes, 1 still standing, several other buildings from halls to tennis and cricket clubs and of course still standing the pump station all abandoned in 1950's, he said apart from 1 house and pump station the rest in the bush and weeds but dam easy to find but a large area spread out and reckons will take them a life time to search the whole site.
so then home just after 4, i think around 450 photos on 5 cameras taking today, wife worked on them to get them of facebook and blogs, now time for me to update my blog, least i got to take daughter into the bush and teach her how to not get lost, show her some aboriginal camps and show here where to find water up on the rock.                     

Todays adventure

above old doodlakine carpark area, below the goldenpipe line road

followed in the footsteps of hunt, a explorer i just put his great but short life story on explorer page. we visited a well he constructed nearly 150 years ago, then followed in a car the track mostly still dirt road for around 100km back to our house. visited bandee, a town that was lost to time, swallowed by a salt lake now but abandoned in the 1970's as motor vehicle transport made my town and kellerberrin a bigger more convient place to shop and live. found a snake that decided to attack our car, scared the crap out of us, we on a salt dried sand track doing 40km a hour and spotted it at last second as it lunged at the front of the car, teach us for watching out for bunny holes and bunnies. found numerous great locations to go detecting, will try doodlakine for sure, the old doodlakine town site is a few km from the current town which is also in rapid decline so may one day be abandoned as well. the old town goes back to 1867 when a well was formed and by 1901 had a small town around it, which is now just a few acres of open land surrounded by granite outcrops and woodlands. was a overnight camp ground for the early gold pioneers and farming pioneers who used the well to stock up on water and rest the animals. the area around well is soft sand, the rest of the site i found was granite and hard clay. i think i need a pick, will look for small one, i have a large one already for my garden but that looks a bit industrial to be carrying around with me.

new facebook page

Have setup a facebook page for people in western australia to post info, reports and stories about coin and relic hunting in the west. sadly all sites in west australia focus on gold and its hard in this gold rich state to find info on relics, yet we have so many sites from the pioneer days still easily reachable.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/CoinRelic-Metal-Detecting-Western-Australia/100328600056724

Garrett Ace 350

finally ordered my first metal detector, sadly could not find the 6 grand needed to get a gold detector but have got one of the best selling american and european detector for searching mainly for coins, jewellery and relics. so once i found 6 grand in treasure i can think of my next one. will post here my adventures as i set out on my new hobby, well i had a radio shack detector back in 1986 and back then i also got into astronomy with my first telescope in 1987 and my first guitar in 1988, i now have 3 old hobbies equipment back in my life.