Powelltown Fossicking with ALF

I though i would post a few photos up of a recent fossicking trip i attended. With the support of many members from the Warragul Lapidary club, and the Australian Lapidary forum, a trip was organised to Powelltown in Victoria’s south east.

Powelltown is a great location that we have been to before and is a location that Topaz, Tourmaline and Quartz (Smokey) can be easily found. The actual fossicking is easy, once you access the creek, and consists of digging and sieving the sandy bottom of the creek. This time around we managed to find a couple of Smokey quartz points, a nice 300 carat clear quartz cutter, many black tourmaline specimens and one sliver of topaz that would be to small to cut.

ANZAC day weekend - Eldorado 2013

ANZAC long weekend saw us take the van out for possibly the last time before winter. We decided a short trip to Eldorado would be a nice break from the hustle and bustle

We have been to the Gemstone Caravan Park in Eldorado a few times now and every time the park is the same, Clean, well maintained and quiet. We really love that its only 10 mins from the Hume Highway yet seems to be virtually unknown and therefore relaxing.

From Eldorado its only a short 30min drive to either Beachworth or Wangaratta, both of which we visited over the weekend. Brown Brothers Winery is also only a short drive away and stock a great Tokay only available at the cellar door.

Right behind the caravan park is the Reedy Creek where alluvial gold can be found along with various gemstones. With my renewed miners right and my pans and sieves i did manage to spend some time fossicking however not much was found other than some well worn glass and a couple of flakes of Gold. The gold did not photograph to well so you will have to trust me the stones i found did but no cutters like last time

Also Nearby to the caravan park is the Swinging Bridge and the Eldorado Dredge. Looking at the photos around the town and in the pub its amazing what this dredge did to the valley in the search for Gold

Sara’s parents, who also came along, have just purchased a Minelab Xterra 705 metal detector and they were keen to have a look around also however there was no real expectation of finding a nugget here. They did have fun learning the machine and digging up other peoples waste

Mostly the weekend was about relaxing and we did plenty of that with the park providing firewood and portable camp fires, one of which found a permanent spot outside our van.

We also spent one afternoon taking the parents out to the old Chinese gardens in search of relics we got to play with the car in 4WD but no relics were found

That will probably be it for a while with the van now due to a good clean and then the covers will go on.

Housekeeping and Blog updates

We are now underway with the planning of the next trip. To help support the planning, i have set up an Itinerary page, as per some of the other trips we have made. It can be found here.

I also plan to update the other Itinerary pages linking to each blog post relevant to that particular trip. I should have this done over the next few days.

We are having quite a bit of fun planing this trip, especially since we now have our own 4WD. We are planing to go on a "tag along tour" whilst in Queensland, hopefully on Stradbroke Island, to learn how to drive on sand. Caitlyn is looking forward to hand feeding the Dolphins at Tin Can Bay, and of course, Sara and I cant wait to visit the Bundaberg Rum Distillery.

In Oberon we are planing to visit the Glow worms at Lithgow, the Jenolan caves and Katoomba. I cant wait to get the girls on the Scenic Railway.

As always, if you have any suggestions or comments please feel free to leave a comment here :)

Eldorado and Canberra

I can't believe it's 2012. Last year just seemed to of went so fast.

Well, January 1st found us crawling out of bed, after a long night of seeing in the new year and watching all the fireworks our various neighbors felt the need to let off.  With a single stop for fuel and food we arrived at the Gemstone caravan park in Eldorado. The park was deserted, hitch I found strange for the Christmas period, but the owner informed me that the park had only just emptied that morning. For us this meant the choice of sites and drive through to boot. 

I have been to this park twice now and it really is a great little, quiet park, just off the highway near Wangaratta. Behind the park is a creek that contains both gemstones, including Smokey and Citrine Quartz, and Gold. As we were only passing through we used the creek as a swimming hole this time and only did some specking for any gems lying on the surface. LasT time, when we came up with the Essendon Lapidary club, we brought the sieves and gold pans allowing us to find both gems and some small specks of gold.

The kids loved playing in the creek and we found ourselves a shady spot to sit in the water and cool off. We we glad we only stopped here for one nit though as the temperature for 2 days later was predicted to be 45degC.

The next day saw us up and gone by 7 am due to Caitlyn getting quite a bad blood nose during her sleep and us all all finding ourselves awake at 6am. With a promise of a McDonalds breakfast, that did not actually eventuate, everyone agreed to hook up the van and get going. 

We eventually stopped at Holbrook, which seems to be a common theme when we travel this way, but with a new bypass being built, not for much longer.

After Holbrook we caught up with Sara's parents in Gundagai before making our way on to Canberra. We arrived at the Canberra motor village around 1pm to about 35 degrees, so shot welcome. After setting up the van we went out in search of a shopping center for some cool air and supplies. We found both ;)

The Colorado is handling the caravan and trips great with an average of about 13.5l per 100km so far. That included a lot of hills and the car has only just gone over 4000km. I expect this va.ue to improve over time.

Our next day will see us visiting the Australian War Memorial, which will be very interesting and a first for the kids.

Our new tow vehicle–A 4WD Holden Colorado

Well, we finally done it. After many years of talking about it and making do with our various lease cars, we finally went out and purchased our own tow vehicle.

We can now begin the slow exercise of setting this car up for towing and the many trips we want to do in the future. As always, if you have any suggestions, please add them to the comments.

So far we have only added the Tinting, a Tow bar with our old electric break controller (Tekonsha Prodigy) and its booked in for a tub liner with ARB. We also plan to fit a UHF radio, an upgrade from our current hand held unit and i am looking at either the GME TX 3340 or the TX3540 with the decision mainly based on price. Without a Bulbar, or plans to get one in the near future, it looks like the antenna will be mounted off of the sports bars.