# Who Fancies a Fossick?



## Diwundrin (Sep 28, 2013)

[Travelogue]  Pics further down for the non readers.

Found another non-tourist friendly place in OZ to show you.  It's neither a resort, nor cheap, but then nothing is out there.


A relative is just back from Cape York Peninsula,  the big pointy bit at the top of the map. In the middle of it, roughly halfway between the bottom corner of the gulf and the coast is the 'bustling' town of Forsayth, an old goldfields town.

He, 'Bob' and his neighbour, 'John' had a mid-life crisis and went on a 'boys own adventure' to the Top End gold fossicking for a few weeks.  They fled a week early after the temperature stayed at 42C for 3 straight days and even the old locals started to remark that it was "getting a bit warm for this time of year."

They took John's old 70's pop top van hitched to his ute with couple of drums of fuel in the back so sitting all day in the van stewing slowly suddenly didn't seem such a great adventure any more.  Wooses!

They did get a couple of tiny nuggets though so they're reasonably happy boys.

I copied a couple of pictures from the stick he brought up to show me, a few I should have kept I've missed though, so no pic of the town.  Imagine around 20-30 dwellings ranging from tin sheds and converted buses to reasonable looking houses scattered around 8 short streets all serviced by a single storey pub, a P.O./Bank and from memory some kind of general store and of course, a camping ground.  (exactly the same  as here so I'm not one to pass judgement. 

  )

They have electronic banking but if you want the internet, that's 40k down the dirt road in the next town.  They do have a short stretch of tar through the main street though so not all bad.

It was a lot bigger a century ago, several thousand people, but when the gold got harder to find they drifted off elsewhere and  both of the lovely old colonial style hotels burnt down about a year before the termites ate through them enough to allow them to collapse of their own accord. 

It didn't become a ghost town though, there were always a few old die-hard fossickers  scrabbling enough colour and the odd small nugget to keep them,  a small tavern and the PO going,  Also some biiiiig cattle stations in the region make the P.O and bank viable.
This link gives a bit of info on it if anyone's interested.
http://sgltd.com.au/eight-geographic-regions/forsayth/

I think he said this pic was taken from the camping ground, hard to tell, it's all pretty much the same around there. The blurb for the camping ground said "Grassed Areas" but Bob said they had a hard look around and didn't see any.  Must only apply in the wet season.
Those trees aren't dead, just shut down waiting for the 'big wet', (monsoon)

'Viewsome' innit?








This is the road to the goldfields on a heavy traffic day.








This is John with the gear, there was one of him swinging a pick and he looked just like Yosemite Sam, but it's not on the file. damn.






Here's some cattle.  They're not looking too chipper but it's the dry season and look around, there's not much to eat.  They'll fatten up when it rains.






Locality shots, this is around 11kms out of town, they had to drive out here to get any mobile phone reception.

That's not the sea in the distance, just more of the same landscape all the way to the Gulf.  (or if you miss the Gulf, all the way to W.A., a couple of thousand k. of it.  Only the dirt colour changes.)











A what is it for Phil.






...aaaand, an ardyfardy fence post!






Now I ask, what more could you wish for as a travel destination?  

Who will be first to book?  You'll get a van site under a scraggy gum tree if you're fast.



 It doesn't always look that bad, it's not a drought, just normal winter dry season, plenty of grass during the summer.  Probably quite pretty then, wetlands and all the goodies that water brings. But the summer temps hover around 45C in the shade so you'd have to be desperate for somewhere new to holiday.
Oh, and those dusty dirt roads are mud tracks 6 months of the year.  

It's rough country, temps vary from zero overnight in winter to 50C in a summer heat wave,  and only the fit survive in it year round.  There are no fat locals out there.


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## Jillaroo (Sep 28, 2013)

_Nah i think i will stay home Di , life looks too hard out there for me_

_Good photos though._


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## SifuPhil (Sep 28, 2013)

Same here - that's a little too rugged for THIS He-Man. 

As for the WII - a steampunk feed-bucket? layful:


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## Jillaroo (Sep 28, 2013)

_*Phil*_


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## Diwundrin (Sep 28, 2013)

Nope, but I'd go with it as Steampunk.  It can't be all that old to be in such good condition.  It's metal, and handcrafted and very useful for it's purpose.  ... and it goes up and down a lot.


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## SifuPhil (Sep 28, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> ...  It's metal, and handcrafted and very useful for it's purpose.  ... and it goes up and down a lot.



I've heard of operations that provide that service for men, but didn't think the end product looked like that.

A bucket for a well?


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## Diwundrin (Sep 28, 2013)

1. I wouldn't know. 



2. Close, but not for a well.


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## SifuPhil (Sep 28, 2013)

A fossicking bucket! layful:

When you don't pan you use a sluice. This is the bucket that picks up the raw water and pours it into the sluice ... 

Or it's an aboriginal helmet.


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## Diwundrin (Sep 28, 2013)

Oooooh nooooo.  You people are obsessed with water!  You have so much of it!
They don't have bucketfuls of it to splash around with there.

Fossickers pick the nuggets up near the surface, using a metal detector,  stuff them in their pockets and stay quiet about it.  Not for fossickers.


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## Diwundrin (Sep 28, 2013)

> Or it's an aboriginal helmet.






Koori military technology hadn't progressed to helmets yet when Cook arrived, sorry.


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## SifuPhil (Sep 28, 2013)

So... it's for ... oil wells. Or a bucket for holding natural gas.

No, wait, that wouldn't work ... 

It's a counter-weight holder for, um, something that needs ... a counter-weight ...

A bucket to catch drop bears! 


... I got nuthin'.


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## Pappy (Sep 28, 2013)

Does this campground have sewer hookup, water, 50 amp electric and cable? 

God,  I must be getting old to ask a question like that.....:lame:


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## Diwundrin (Sep 28, 2013)

Phil, I sooo want to give you a Ding Ding for the Drop Bears. 



You were so close, it's an ore bucket.  It's a gold field, but a small time one so some dig their own little one man mines. Very similar to opal mining.
Those buckets fit nicely down a shaft, the digger fills it, and it's winched up with a hook through the ring in the handle.  Miners can do that alone if they have a frame above the shaft and a rope and pulley system.  They  sieve the ore through a series of meshes in dry country. They must miss a lot of flakes but the little nuggets gather at the bottom and they made a buck out of it.
 I doubt anyone does it like that now.  Bob went and had a look at a bigger old mine, he's a retired coal miner and wouldn't set foot in it.  He says it looked have about a quarter the number of props in it that it should have had.  They lived dangerously.

Septic tank in a community block Pappy. Electricity yes, they must be wired up for the Bank and eftpos to work I guess. I didn't ask about that. I know they were miffed about missing the footy on TV because a ute had run off the road and they had to stay with the bloke who had a broken leg until the 'ambulance' arrived from 50k away.  It was the Mayor's 'combi' van which was ambulance/community bus and his personal transport combined.  There is a proper ambulance but it's a further 50 away.
Drive carefully out there. 


 Tch fancy missing their footy game. What a shame.  

I amazed there's no line up for bookings, tch, tourists, they must all want to stay on the beaches under the palm trees.

You're beginning to  see why we all live around the coast now right?


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## SifuPhil (Sep 28, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> Phil, I sooo want to give you a Ding Ding for the Drop Bears.



Thanks to you that phrase will be forever in my brain now - I even look for excuses to use it. 



> You were so close, it's an ore bucket.  It's a gold field, but a small time one so some dig their own little one man mines. Very similar to opal mining.
> 
> Those buckets fit nicely down a shaft, the digger fills it, and it's winched up with a hook through the ring in the handle.  Miners can do that alone if they have a frame above the shaft and a rope and pulley system.  They  sieve the ore through a series of meshes in dry country. They must miss a lot of flakes but the little nuggets gather at the bottom and they made a buck out of it.



Man, what a tough way to make a living. I have no real knowledge of gold mining so anything I come up with is based mostly on what Hollywood has shown me. That's usually the grizzled old forty-niner standing in a little stream, bent over and slowly shaking his sieve until he finds a tiny little nugget, then he jumps up in the air, clicks his heels and in that Gabby Hayes voice yells "EUREKA!".

Even better for Bogart addicts like myself was _Treasure of the Sierra Madre_ - excellent film for those who have never seen it. It shows how gold can drive men to do things they normally wouldn't. 

But there's always water involved in these depictions, so I have a hard time wrapping my head around dry mining and panning. Totally different world. 

 Thanks for the mental challenge!


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## Katybug (Sep 28, 2013)

LOL at it being a travel destination, under the gum tree!  My mid-life crisis leaned more toward south gulf coast Florida.  For those it appeals to, it surely is a totally different world, one I don't want to even imagine.  Interesting pix & history on it tho, thanks!


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