Bringing the history of an era back to life

I am an Adelaide boy and I love South Australia’s history, it simply oozes out of every little nook and cranny in our small country towns. Although, each one has its own unique story and there always seems to be a connection somewhere that brings it all together. I thoroughly enjoy coin & relic hunting because for me, there is nothing better than gathering together many facets of information and weaving it all together with the bits & pieces that you find to bring the history of an era back to life.

I started detecting over 21 years ago when a friend of mine won a Minelab Eldorado Mark II in a raffle, but he didn’t want it, so I bought it off of him for $100.00. In hindsight I would have to say that it was the best $100.00 that I ever invested, as it was the beginning of my fascination with the great hobby of coin & relic hunting. From the very beginning the evidence was apparent to me that Minelab metal detectors were in a league of their own and so I have never purchased anything but Minelab.
Although, detecting would take up all my spare time I mainly targeted coins for many years because in my early stages of detecting I was averaging huge hauls of coins, because there were only a handful of people detecting and this kept me busy. With the old Eldorado getting tired, I decided to upgrade to a Musketeer XS, another fine machine that was and still is more than capable of finding great hauls, but I was still mostly targeting only coins.

My wife and I decided to take a year off and travel around Australia with our two young daughters and of course I took the detector. We still talk about the hours of fun we all had detecting all over Australia. While I would find the targets, the girls would follow me around digging up all the coins. I recall one day when we found over $260.00 in one playground just out of Darwin, what a fun family day that was.

About 12 months ago, after having some time away from detecting due to work and family, I decided to dust off the Musketeer and get back into it. Although I was still finding coins I wanted to upgrade to a better detector. So after much research and many questions all roads kept leading to the E-TRAC and how it is the best Coin & Relic metal detector. Around eight months ago I purchased my E-TRAC and since day one I haven’t looked back, even though it has been a steep fast learning curve.
This machine was certainly living up to all the hype that I had read about it and the stories of its abilities were definitely spot on, but the best was yet to come. I started to find a few silver pre decimal coins and suddenly the world of detecting had gone to a whole new level. I started to go over old ground that myself and others had been over to find that there are literally hundreds of coins deeper in the ground and over the past seven months I have amassed a total of over 600 silver coins alone and this does not include the thousands of pennies and other coins that I have found.

Dog registration discs & relics found with the E-TRAC

I have also become extremely passionate about South Australia’s history which through hours of research has led me to an absolute treasure trove of coins and relics that date back even earlier than our settlement date of 1836. There is something really amazing and mystical about finding something that was lost possibly over 150 years ago and it is only now seeing the light of day again, it always takes me on a bit of a journey, as I start to try and piece together the people and what they did from the different relics that I find.

T Stokes traders token

It’s great to meet people along the way, that give you permission to hunt these old sites and the friendships that develop over time. One story of interest was when an old farmer that I have become friends with came and got me from a site he had given me permission to hunt on. He told me to follow him so he could show me some other old sites. While we were at one of the sites I was giving it a quick once over and found an 1884 English 3d, he picked it up rubbed it clean and said “well ill be, my grandmother could have dropped this” as he stood there doing the sums as to when she lived there, you’ve got to love those moments.

Mark Williams 
www.coinrelicdownunder.wordpress.com