Finally.
So tides came right, and then they give the whole country heavy rain warnings!
On Monday the whole sky was grey, and it rained a bit so I flagged it.
Tuesday, I was up earlier, tide was not yet out. Even though the sky was nasty, I decided to man up.
If I go at lower tide I’ve got to drag my kayak through several metres of mud to get it in the water, and then have a restricted path to go up river due to shallow bottoms. And the path has raging outgoing currents… more on that later.
Sandflies decide to have a go straight away while kayaking, some deciding to make a home in my ear holes! Another had no mercy when it went for blood of my eyelid!
Sure I had repellent in my bag (probably), but once I was waste deep in cold river water & reaching down to my neck for retrievals I was probably too numb to feel their bites. Because I certainly saw blood spots on my arms later on.
Otherwise the day was relaxing, the river had it’s normal colour back, and was calm. (will take pix next time)
I decided to go far up the river past my silver ring spot for some quartz ore samples. Then detect low tide spots on the way back.
Had to stop where too many tree trunks prevented me from paddling further.
Began to pick up some amazing jasper, interesting clay clumps (pure white, grey), some quartz, these greeny rocks - likely manganese ore (nothing important as far as gold indicating).
Did that for too long, I had to restrain myself my ore collection is turning into a hoard. Found some bricks and crockery from the ancients. Pulled a large dark rock from the river which turned out to be an 8kg piece of coal! Have you seen bigger?
Tried to push my kayak back in from side to row up further and nearly got washed over!
So took my giant coal off the back and even detector - if I was going to swim I did not want it going with me.
With some huculean paddling I managed to get to a large stone bank, there was also an old river route there too - time to get some gravel to pan.
Looked like a good area, some glass from the ancients, found more coal aswell, had to stop myself - I’ll return to collect the coal another day.
Will need to row up at full tide to get past all the trees, keen to detect that rock bank.
On my way down, it was crazy because more tree trunks were exposed limiting the route back and the current was mad fast.
Only found fencing wire, a few old nails.
Where I initially parked was a small bank, detected it, and moved my kayak to detect under, that’s when I found my cast lead. Always do a full sweep.
Happily the river bottom was quite firm and rocky, wheres the sides had a metre of mud.
Will return one day when my detector is waterproof and I can dive the deeper water flow areas - thats probably where the goodies have moved to anyway.
A piece of cast lead from a toy, front of train engine?
B Black rock too heavy for Jet, has quartz veins
D Interesting slate like quartz piece
C Lots of yellow sulphides
Got a nice thick fluro work shirt (previous pic)
Only found 1 sinker.
Picked up a stack of cream chargers, ferals decided to empty their car rubbish at the water side, nice. Found lots of car parts in river aswell.
Nice flat piece of coal too.