Jack Strikes Gold
Submitted by:
Jack Langes
02 Feb 2009
Location: Northern Queensland
I didn’t think there was any gold left in Australia to find with metal detectors and thought only dreamers and fools chased gold. On our very first family trip, with no expectations whatsoever, I ended up with about two hundred nuggets about the size of a two-dollar coin and that really, kicked me off with gold fever.
The desire to prospect has grown because we’ve enjoyed it as a family.You see places that others just don’t see. I just love the sense of adventure. I often feel I should have been born in the generation of Captain Cook and been on The Endeavour. Gold can be found anywhere. And onone particular trip, very wild, very remote, I had been detecting all-day and had found nothing.
My brother had only found one small nugget in the morning. And about 4:30pm my brother called me on the two-way. He said “Jack”. He said “I’ve got this big strange signal.” He guided me up the side of a steep hill and around a corner and through a gully and up another gully!
We take vehicles but really its horse country or perhaps motorbike country. And then I spotted him sitting on a little flat about the size of a kitchen table and there was a hole there about half a metre deep. He was perspiring and exhausted.
So I got the pick out and dug down and eventually I pinpointed a little strip at the bottom of a hole three-foot deep. And we dare not get excited butthe higher the excitement, the bigger the let down if it’s something else. So I’m thinking to myself it’s probably just a horseshoe or something like that and we were actually pulling away slabs of rock and I said: “this ground is undisturbed”, “it wouldn’t be a horseshoe or a nail that deep down in this hard virgin ground”, “You’re on to something here!” And you start mind games with yourself to control your emotions.
So I started to swing the pick vigorously and I made a mistake in the depth of the target and I hit an object and it flicked up in the air and it landed in between my feet. I picked it up and it was really heavy but I couldn’t see any yellow. We washed it and it turned out to be a magnificent specimen of crystalline gold, the most valuable sort of gold. It was twice as big as any nugget that had been found in that goldfield by the old timers in the old days. Then we allowed ourselves to get excited and hug each other and shake hands and jump around a bit.
The collectors fought for that one! It was a great experience but I keep it in proportion to the more valuable side of life, the relationships you have with your family. There’s something about staring at the coals in the campfire and being out in the bush sharing our plans, our hopes, our dreams our philosophies of life which is,its really more precious than gold. I just love exploring! You don’t know what you are going to find next whether it’s a golden goose egg or a what. It’s very, very exciting and it’s very addictive! A little beauty!
