‘Did I just say that out loud?’ I asked myself replacing the receiver of the telephone after talking long distance to Reno, Nevada where Chris Ralph, aka ‘Reno Chris’, the author of ‘Fists Full of Gold’ lives. Chris and I go back a reasonable distance after having met each other on a couple occasions when I was in Arizona doing lectures for ‘Arizona Outback’ and I instantly took a liking to the big friendly American with the ready smile and loud booming voice.
Chris’s knowledge on all things gold is amazing to say the least and to have him as my guest here in Australia while he fulfilled a lifelong dream was something I could not resist. Only one thing though, Chris wasn’t in a position to take me up on the offer immediately so the initial plan had to be held off until he was ready. That was the bit I found myself pondering over because making an open ended promise like that is very hard to keep when you have no clear idea where you’ll be in six months’ time.
One year on, the concept turned out to be even larger than I had initially thought with the trip duration extending from two to four weeks and the very welcome surprise addition of another team member, none other than the very well-known detecting identity from Alaska, Steve Herschbach, ‘Did I just say that out loud?’ indeed, hope they like my cooking?
In late August I found myself loitering at the Perth airport arrivals lounge closely followed the next day by a friendly meet and greet BBQ at Reed’s Prospecting where Chris and Steve chatted to the crowd. Stocking up on supplies the day after then driving eight hours north to the gold fields with a couple of right hand sided drivers following along behind in a loaned 4x4 had me a little nervous, finally arriving at our first camp of the trip just on dusk without incident was a huge relief.
From left to right: Chris Ralph, Jonathan Porter & Steve Herschbach
Day one found us all bouncing out of bed well before the birds broke the silence (OK Chris might have been a little slower), breakfast was unceremoniously gobbled down amidst endless banter about the history of the area and how far we had to travel to find gold, telling them they merely had to step out of their tent and start swinging the coil was pretty mind blowing for them, Chris’s first impressions of the geology was a treat to see, I heard him mumbling over and over '...it’s so weathered!’.
We were using GPX 5000 metal detectors kindly supplied by Minelab Electronics in combination with 11” Commander Monoloop coils, taking full advantage of Minelab’s proprietary MPS, DVT and SETA technologies as well as the incredible new ‘Fine Gold’ Timings, as the area we were going to be first detecting is heavily mineralised with Banded Iron hot rocks all over the surface of the ground. (For more info see Chapter 5 of ‘Unwrapping the GPX 5000’ DVD).
All of us had UHF radios and a GPS on our persons along with at least two litres of water and other personal items such as fly veils, snacks and toilet paper, I also laid down a few Aussie style detecting ground rules on where to detect and why.
It was such an honour to be present when after only a few short minutes Steve and then Chris found their first pieces of Aussie gold, why not take a peek at the attached video blog for the low down on our first detecting day, meanwhile here are the settings we used for the majority of ‘The West Australian Adventure’.
Front Panel
Search Mode: General
Soil/Timings: Special
Coil/Rx: Mono
Ground Balance: Fixed
Main Menu
Backlight: OFF
Battery Test: 8.0+V
Volume Limit: 12 FP
GB Type: General
Special: Fine Gold
Manual Tune: 80 – 130
General Menu
Motion: Slow
RX Gain: 11 to 14
Audio: Deep
Audio Tone: 63
Stabilizer: 8
Signal: 19
Target Volume: 8 FP
Response: Normal
Tracking: Medium
Iron Reject: OFF
As always I encourage any and all questions/queries about the settings or scenes in the video material... enjoy!
Jonathan Porter
Comments