Detecting Projects

WHEN I AM NOT TREASURE HUNTING I PRODUCE PAINTINGS OF TREES, BIRDS & ANIMALS

DETECTING PROJECTS
Metal Detecting in Australia & Beyond

#Coins, #Rings, #Hafpenny, #SwivelGun, #MusketBalls #Bush, #Outback, #Australia,

Email Rex Woodmore: art@mail-me.com

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
Do the right thing!

Your rights - Do the right thing!

As funny as this story may be, it has a serious warning to individuals who grab a metal detector and take off for a long weekend of gold detecting. Many of them don’t even have the mandatory ‘Miners Right’ let alone the knowledge or even care for the rules and regulations. They trespass and steal without a thought for the ramifications of their actions. Strangely they don’t see themselves as criminals stealing from a hard working individual or a large corporation.
Unauthorised mining is an offence under the 1978 Mining Act.
Individuals can be fined up to $150,000 and a further $15,000 for each day an offence continues, while for companies the fines are doubled.
http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/Documents/Safety/MSH_G_ProspectingWA.pdf

1827 MUSKET BALL & 1889 HALFPENNY
FOUND: SEPTEMBER 2017 WESTERN AUSTRALIA

My wife Lyn and I love to escape from suburbia, and head for the Outback in our 'Supervan'
On a 4000 km trip from Perth to Exmouth,while metal detecting an inland area where Europeans diverted water from a natural rock hole to a dam (depriving the local Aboriginals of their water) I found an 1889 Queen Victoria halfpenny.

1889 Halfpenny & Musket Ball

OUTBACK CAMPING

Further down the track where a European settler was murdered by a local tribe (who in all fairness were probably trying to protect their only water source in an arid land) I found a piece of molten lead weighing 64.7 grams and then a lead musket ball weighing 31.9grams and about 17.5mm in diameter.

The firearm used by early settlers, convicts and troopers from the late 1780’s to the 1840’s and 50’s was the flintlock musket.

Flintlock Musket

Making musket balls. You Tube

Sydney Living Museums
How musket balls are made. In a crucible sheet lead is melted and then poured into a bullet mould. A few moments are allowed for the lead to set, excess lead is sliced off.

The extremely hot lead ball is dropped into a bucket of water and left to cool.

WHEN I AM NOT TREASURE HUNTING I PRODUCE PAINTINGS OF TREES, BIRDS & ANIMALS

Painting by Rex Woodmore

Don't sell your house to go looking for the treasure that you read about here on Oztreasure, or any other website, for that matter. Invest in my art instead! :-)
http://art-sale.weebly.com or https://bluethumb.com.au/rexwoodmore

MY FEEBLE EFFORTS
Getting even more feeble each year.

Garrett AT Pro Metal Detector

I use a Garrett AT Pro metal detector on land and underwater (with garret waterproof headphones) to search the Swan & Canning Rivers, Metro beaches, parks and anywhere that I have the legal right, on the coast & outback of Western Australia & beyond.

ONE OF MY INTERESTING FINDS
Who said petrification takes thousands of years?

Petrified Pliers

I found these pliers while detecting with my Garret ATPro in the Canning River, Western Australia. They were buried about 20cm of knee deep saline mud. These petrified pliers were encased in a hard concretion

Being a modern implement it has obviously not taken thousands of years for the hard rock around them. which consisted of broken shells, rust & course quartz grains, to form. Right next to the pliers I found an Australian 50% silver coin, a Florin (2 shillings)

The Australian Florin went out of circulation in the 1960's, but I will not fall into the trap of thinking I can date the pliers by the date on the coin.
It could, for all I know, have been dropped there yesterday.

Metal detecting Florin found on oztreasure.weebly

Australian Florin - River Find

NOTE: (There is a story of thousand year old coins found on an island & for years people have been debating about them. They seem to forget that they were found in the 1940s and could have been dropped there in the 1940s, The date and country on the coin is no guide to who dropped them and when!)

A FEW OLD DETECTING STORIES
TRUE? TANTALISING TALES of TREASURE

KIDS METAL DETECTOR

TOY FINDS TREASURE.
A guy in Mexico, bought a cheap beginners metal detector (A kid's cheap toy) and excitedly headed off into the desert. As one would expect, he had days of finding only junk,but when he was on the verge of quitting he dug one last target. It turned out to be a 389 ounces gold nugget and it sold at auction for $1.55 million

SPANISH GOLD MINE
In Texas, a party of treasure hunters with metal detectors discovered an abandoned mine, which may be the lost gold mine worked by the Spaniards until they were attacked & overpowered by the Comanche Indians in 1758.

Comanche wars

A 'MODEL' T FORD

MYSTERY - MODEL 'T' A guy using a metal detector in his backyard unearthed a Model T Ford that had been buried in 1926 ‘to preserve it for posterity’
The report didn't say if it was a full size Model 'T' or a 'model' of a Model T Ford !

RING FINGER. At the site where Lt. Col. George Custer’s troops were wiped out by the Sioux in 1876, an archaeology volunteer with a metal detector made the gruesome find of a ring with a finger still in it.

RING FINGER

CONSPIRACY CORRECTED An amateur treasure hunter using a detector, on railroad property in Dallas, found a bullet near the site of President John F Kennedy's assassination.

BULLET TRAIN

Hoping it may be a new lead on who killed JFK he took it to the FBI and was disappointed when they informed him the bullet was of a different type to those that killed JFK.

A LIVE ROUND AROUND A SCHOOL A man metal detecting near a school for old coins, found a live .75 millimetre tank shell, which believed to be a buried World War II souvenir. The shell was carefully removed by the bomb disposal squad.

"Tanks very much"

OVER THE GARDEN DE-FENCE

GRANDADDY'S GARDEN
Two boys using a metal detector in their grandfather’s backyard uncovered a live Confederate Army artillery shell.
LEFT: "Oops! It went over the garden fence. I guess they will find it oneday"

CAN TURNS INTO CHALICE
Using a detector underwater, a diver off Key West, found what, at first, he thought was a beer can stuck in the mud, but when the sediment cleared he found himself clasping a heavy golden chalice (valued at $1 million) from a Spanish treasure ship that sank in 1622.

"Gold Chalice?"

FRAGMENTED FORTUNE
During an exhausting, five day nonstop search and discovery; a man in the UK found hundreds of large chunks and fragments of gold objects.

Later an official archaeological team found 3,500 pieces of broken objects, that make up several hundred complete items made of gold, silver and garnet. The Anglo-Saxon treasure was valued at around $5.3 million.

MISSING MAIL In the backyard of a deceased postal employee who had many years before, stolen money, postal inspectors using a U.S. Army metal detector discovered $153,150 of stolen cash stored in jars and cans inside a length of stovepipe.

Cash jammed in jam jars.

Dead man's treasure

DEAD MAN'S TREASURE Just like in a movie, a faded old hand drawn map, led a treasure hunter to a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia, where using a metal detector,

he discovered a skeleton buried together with a hoard of 18th-century Spanish and Portuguese gold doubloons. The treasure is thought to be from a Spanish galleon plundered by pirates in 1725.

CRUSHED CUP In a field in Kent, UK a retired electrician discovered a Gold Cup. Although it had been run over and crushed by tractors and mangled by a modern ploughs, it is still a very rare & valuable find, and one of only seven similar gold cups, found in Europe, dating to between 1700 and 1500 BC. The British Museum paid $520,000 to be shared between the finder & land owner.

CRUSHED GOLD CUP

1926 class ring

INITIAL FIND In the sand at the bottom of a lake in Florida, a metal detector enthusiast found a high school class ring dated 1926 with the owners initials engraved on it.

With a little research the rightful (grateful) owner was tracked down and presented with the ring that he had lost 48 years before.

SEARCHING FOR SECRETS IN THE OUTBACK
A detecting project at a secret airbase could be a 'blast' !

Marble Bar The hottest Town in Australia.
It gets its name from a nearby rock outcrop that looks like marble but is in fact jasper (Chert) and runs across the bed of the Coongan River.

The Chert or Jasper bar at Marble Bar

Main Street of Marble Bar

The town of Marble Bar began in 1893, after gold was found in the area in 1890 by a prospector Francis Jenkins, whose name ‘Francis’ lives on in the name of the main street (Francis Street).

During the gold rush some large gold nuggets were found including: Little Hero nugget (333 ounces), Bobby Dazzler (413 ounces) and General Gordon (332 ounces).

Right: Modern finds by Minrex resources,
of Gold nuggets near Marble Bar, Western Australia.

Gold nuggets

Iron Clad Hotel Marble Bar

A popular building in the town is the 1890’s Ironclad hotel, constructed of corrugated Iron, and given the name by American miners after the Ironclad ships of the United States.

The partly overgrown remains of one of the best-kept secrets of Australian involvement in World War II can be found in the Pilbara Region of Western Australia.

Windsock at secret air base

Abandoned truck at secret airbase

I first heard of this abandoned secret military base, many years ago when Treasure hunter Allan Robinson told me of his visit to a very inhospitable area in the Outback of Western Australia where he saw rusting trucks, machinery and piles of 44 gallon drums (Some still filled with fuel).

In those days you could expect to find ammunition boxes, bomb holders and even a few rounds of live ammunition in abandoned buildings. Allan was seriously discussing the possibility of acquiring salvage rights to the metals left there - copper pipes, lead, brass and so on. I was extremely enthusiastic until he mentioned one minor problem….When Allan Robinson visited,the area was still ‘secret’
There is no knowing what might have happened to him if he had been seen poking around in an area that at the time was probably still covered by the official secrets act.
Today the area is no longer a secret and would be an interesting place to metal detect (watch out for live ammo), but this is still harsh, unforgiving country. In the days before air conditioning, tormented by flies, scorpions and snakes, this must have been a very tough place to work in. A visit today in air- conditioned vehicles is much easier, but it is still a tough hot rugged place with nearby Marble Bar recognised as Australia's hottest town.

World War 2 Secret air base.

Bombers at World War 2 Secret air base.

http://www.marblebar.org.au/destination/marble-bar/corunna-downs-airfield/
‘No.73 Operational Base’ or ‘Corunna Downs’ the name of the active cattle station on which the base was located, was a secret Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base 40 km south of Marble Bar, plonked in the middle of desolate spinifex country in the blazing heat, it was heavily camouflaged and carefully hidden. Long-range B-24 Liberator bombers roared in and out, heavily loaded with bombs to bomb Japanese bases in Singapore, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and other island targets to the north of the Australia.

The Corunna Downs base closed on January 14,1946. Today, it is a bit creepy but is a peaceful place full of memories and imaginings of its historic past. I am sure that there are still a few secrets to be discovered.
Slowly but surely it is being reclaimed by the desert. The main runways, constructed with bitumen surfaces are cracked and parched from exposure to the relentless sun and are almost completely covered by sand.

The signposted access road (Corunna Downs Station Road/Salgash Road) to the old Corunna Downs Air Base (36km from Marble Bar) is all gravel, usually in quite good condition (except after rain) and can be travelled with care in conventional two- wheel-drive vehicles. Along the way (through old gold and copper mining areas and undulating, spinifex covered hillsides) there are a number of small creek crossings and parts of the road can be a little eroded. The trip is generally OK for off-road caravans or camper trailers but, as there are no facilities and the old base is on the privately-owned Corunna Downs cattle station, permission to camp must be obtained beforehand. Preferably use Marble Bar as a base and make a daytrip out to the air base.

The invisible WW2 Airfield

Visit the Marble Bar visitor information centre (in the local shire office) for road conditions to the site. It is about an hour journey to get there from Marble Bar.
Further info photos and memorabilia from Corunna Downs Air Base can be seen at the Comet Gold Mine and Tourist Centre near Marble Bar township. Phone 9176 1015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=90&v=tFcIrvpcSO4
ttps://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php?topic=52094.0

GOLD BAR
“A guy walks into a bar....”

Gold Digger's Gold

The beginning of this story might sound like one of those old jokes:
“A guy walks into a bar....”
But in a gold mining town of Western Australia, that’s exactly what happened:

On a long weekend, in the Goldfields of Western Australia, a young guy from the city, walked into a bar, sat down on a stool at the counter, surrounded by six or seven locals, ordered a beer and then proudly and loudly bragged about how, with his brand new Garrett metal detector, he had just found a ‘beaut’ big nugget of gold, which he took from his pocket and dropped onto the beer splashed bar in front of him. It was indeed a beautiful and valuable gold specimen, probably worth more than the detector that was used to find it.
A gruff voice from the other end of the counter asked
“Where’d you get that from?”
The young guy with the gold thought “I’m not that stupid” He wasn’t going to give away the location, so instead he pointed through the window to a rock strewn hill and flippantly said “Just over the other side of that hill”
An old timer next to him, reached over with a sun tanned hand, picked up the nugget and quietly slipped into his shirt pocket and said:
“That’s my gold Sonny!” and went back to sipping his beer.
Before the young guy could ask “What do you mean?” Someone said
“That’s his claim on the other side of that hill, so it is his gold! Ha! Ha!”
And another chuckling voice said “You can’t get out of it mate! All of us here are witnesses to what you said !” The whole bar errupted in raucous laughter, the youg guy left red faced and minus his nugget!

via GIPHY

GARRETT METAL DETECTING

TREASURE HUNTING
TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Garret AT Pro Metal Detector

Garrett Underwater Headphones

I got a free hat & big backpack with my gear "Yay!"

Big bag for big treasures!

Garret Pro Pointer

Garrett AT Pro Hat (Top quality!)

My 'Super Van" Reliable 4x4 Vehicle

BEACH DETECTING North West Western Australia.

Pebbles of Pebble Beach, Exmouth

One adventure my wife Lyn & I particularly enjoyed was in May 2012.
It was a Western Australian Coastal camping trip from Gosnells to Exmouth (Home of the World Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef) and back. For me detecting on a pebble beach was something new & quite profitable too. In all we did 3661 kilometres (almost 2275 miles)

DETECTING UP THE COAST
TO NINGALOO

Ningaloo Sunset. Photo by Lynette Woodmore

I metal detected on many of the beaches including Jurien Bay, Greenhead, Leeman, Dongara, Geraldton, Carnarvon, Coral Bay, Shark Bay (Denham & Monkey Mia), Pebble Beach, Turquoise Bay (Exmouth) and at Ningaloo Station where unfortunately our ‘Supervan’ although it is 4WD, was not tough enough to explore the areas that contain the shipwreck material the area is well known for and so I did not find the treasures that may be lying in the sand around Point Cloates. The 1811 wreck of the American ship ‘Rapid’ once had 180,000 Spanish American silver coins on it and many, if not most of this coin, has been salvaged but quite a few are still unaccounted for. There are other wrecks including the 1816 wreck of the Portuguese vessel ‘Correio da Azia’ which has produced some coin and there is one wreck that has only recently been discovered and thought to be mid-19th century, buried on the beach. It was due to be explored by museum marine archaeologists the week after we were in the area.
Although I did not discover shipwreck treasure, by the end of the trip I had 177 metal detecting ‘Hits’ on coin totalling $147.14 metric coins, plus an American half dollar, a Singapore five cents, an Exmouth tourist centre token, 2 costume jewellery earrings, a gold plated ring and best of all, an 8gram Sterling silver pendent. Plus numerous fishing sinkers (1.7kg of lead) and dozens of bottle caps (which I collect and bin)…Oh! and a Thomas the Tank Engine toy too.

A HEAP
METAL DETECTED TREASURE

There were a couple of oddities I found while metal detecting.
A piece of cast metal, in the water in Shark Bay, embossed with '1200 miles' and a lead tag (found in Geraldton) similar to the historic ones I previously found in the Canning River, but it must be modern as it has what looks like a fragment of double sided tape attached to it .

Treasure found beach Metal detecting on the beaches of North Western Australia. Photo by Lynette Woodmore.

BEAUTIFUL COLOURFUL BEACHES

A beach near Exmouth Western Australia

Another beach near Exmouth Western Australia

MANGROVE CAMPSITE

Camped on the edge of the mangroves.

South of Carnarvon W.A. there are two unusual camping areas ‘Bush Beach’ & ‘New Beach’ here you can camp free on mudflats alongside the Mangrove swamp
We had no problems with mosquitoes, as there was a constant breeze blowing which seems to keep them away.
The only insects were butterflies that fluttered around our heads and actually came into our campervan.

A GUN FROM A SHIPWRECK?

A Swivel gun - a bit like a jack.

I imagined it was a ships swivel gun, like the Portuguese bronze gun found by a boy in the Northern Territory (A find that threatens the accuracy of our history books which make no mention of early Portuguese exploration)
But no! it was just a rusty old high lift jack.
It was the biggest thing I ever bothered to dig while detecting. “Oh well! Perhaps next time?”

MANGROVE JACK

'Mangrove Jack' is a type of fish, but not this time! Photo by Rex

It was a good thing that we got going early in the morning because as we packed up, the tide came in silently inundating the low points around us and quite quickly snaking its way along the track leading from the water’s edge towards us.
The rapid tide explained the rusty high lift jack that I found in the mud the day before. I imagine some guy using it to extract his vehicle from the mud and then leaving the jack behind as he fled from the rising waters.

Detecting in the Mangroves. Photo by Lynette Woodmore.

Sunset in the Mangroves. Picture by Lynette Woodmore.

ABOUT SWIVEL GUNS YouTube

The tide came in quickly through the mangroves and down our track. These photos, by my wife Lynette Woodmore,were only about ten minutes apart.

WILDLIFE TREASURES

Butterfly in Mangroves. Photo by Rex Woodmore

On the roads, particularly late one afternoon, we saw lots of very small Kangaroos that at first we thought were young ones, until we saw one with a tiny joey, poking out its head from the safety of its Mother’s pouch. We saw lots of emus in the wild (which also roam free throughout the resort at Coral Bay) and Lyn saw her first wild Echidna.
On Ningaloo station we saw hundreds, perhaps even a thousand, of what I thought were feral goats. Now I hate to admit it (especially as I once owned goats & have a Certificate of Dairy Goat husbandry) that these multi coloured things that I did not recognise, are in fact Damara sheep.

UGLY FISH - THAT LOOK LIKE ROCKS
Stone Fish

Stone Fish Shark Bay Western Australia. Photo by Lynette Woodmore.

UGLY ROCKS - THAT LOOK LIKE FISH
Fish Stones?

Oyster shells, Limestone & Imagination. Photos by Lynette Woodmore

DOLPHINS OF MONKEY MIA
No monkeys - Only dolphins, fish and emus.

Friendly Dolphins at Monkey Mia. Photos by Lynette Woodmore.

CORAL TREASURES

Parrot Fish Ningaloo. Underwater Photos by Rex Woodmore

My wife Lyn and I dived with a turtle, a multitude of colourful coral fish & large stingrays.
At Ocean Park (South of Denham) we saw many species of Shark in captivity, then at Monkey Mia, we saw friendly but still wild dolphins being hand fed in the shallows of the beautiful bay.

Turtle Ningaloo Western Australia. Underwater Photos by Rex Woodmore

Turquoise Bay Ningaloo Western Australia. Underwater Photos by Rex Woodmore.

Coral Reef Turquoise Bay. Underwater Photos by Rex Woodmore

Coral Turquoise Bay Ningaloo Western Australia. Photo by Rex Woodmore

Coral Bay Ningaloo Western Australia. Underwater Photos by Rex Woodmore

Underwater at Ningaloo Western Australia. Underwater Photos by Rex Woodmore

A LAND OF CONTRASTS
Western Australia

The Pinnacles, Cervantes, WA

A rural scene near Geraldton W.A.

SHEEP THAT LOOK LIKE GOATS
Damara Sheep

I used to keep Anglo Nubian goats and I have a certificate of dairy goat husbandry, so I was a bit embarrassed to find out that what I thought were strange, long tailed goats were actually a type of sheep - Damara sheep.

RIGHT: Like a scene from Egypt, a parched area, that had not yet recovered after a fire, on Ningaloo Station in Western Australia, with a big flock of Damara sheep. Photo by Lynette Woodmore.