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 Post subject: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2016 11:26 pm 
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The Aussies have their diary going and thats a great idea! Well that spawned another idea.
I was thinking of starting a new thread here in miners corner. Tales of the roaming prospector.
I like the idea of tales not stories, because they are more adventurous, maybe slightly stretched in the telling like any good miner/prospector sitting around the camp at the end of the day. Mostly about prospecting/mining adventures or preparations for those adventures. I have some 30 years of kicking stones and wanderings in the western US to call upon, as do many of the contributors here. That may be exotic for some, mundane for others. Thats why I chose roaming prospector. The tales could come from anywhere and be from anyone.
I'm not looking to write a book or even tell long stories, but share short versions of the things that happen to us during our quest for that elusive stone of our dreams.
What are your thoughts on this? yea/nay?

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2016 11:45 pm 
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Maybe this idea is already in play in the field trip for gem hunters G.Madison tells a good tale of Nevada. :D

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 2:01 am 
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I like it Dan! :D Thinking cap on.........


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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 11:26 am 
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Barbra, where would you like the thread to be. Field trips or miners corner?

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 11:42 am 
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This isn't 100% on point for the prompt, but I really enjoyed reading this story in particular:
http://www.hafizgemstones.com/Peridot-minetrip.htm
His English isn't perfect but it just adds to the charm.

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 12:11 pm 
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Yep that's the idea of things. And it's not. His was a neat trip I'll give it that. Pictures were beautiful! Quite informational as well.

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 12:28 pm 
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Sometimes prospecting tales don't actually have much to do with the actual process of prospecting. Quick example from the long list of things that take place on my trips.

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 12:58 pm 
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My buddy Dave and I were on a short trip to the mcoloume river near Jackson California. We drug the usual sluice boxes, shovels and buckets down to the river and set up for the day. Dave is a rather stout fellow in his early 50s. A ex army combat medic and always has some trick up his sleeve for the day.
I am busy digging holes the the gravel and pouring buckets into the sluice enjoying a day of escaping. I look over to see how Dave is doing and I see him with a rather odd look on his face. Then he gets a shiver that shakes his whole body, and goes back to digging. A couple times this goes on before I'm wondering if maybe Dave is having one of those flashback days. So I mosey over to his diggings, give my back a rest from the shovel. Dave drops his shovel in the hole and takes 3 quick steps to the sluice box and grab it as if it was going to leave!
Now I'm about 20' away wading through some fast heavy current and wondering if I'm going to make it there without taking a cold mountain stream bath. He reaches for something on the leg of the sluice box and quickly raises his hands up and takes 2 steps away to the sand bar. I'm thinking, OK it's definitely one of those days and Dave is choking the life out of some Viet Cong soldier and it's 1968 again. As I'm easing up he turns towards me with a huge grin on his face and a fat 4 lb trout in his hands! Promptly drops it into his waders and give the shiver and shake as it slides down into the boot. Says to me we can probably leave this worthless sand pit and go. Haven't dug a nugget all day, but I've got supper! And this one just broke off the string I had tied off to my box so I'm done fishing too.

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 1:56 pm 
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I'm reminded of the wonderful African gem-hunting stories written by Justice Malanot and published in Eclectic Lapidary. I wonder if they were ever collected anywhere?


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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 3:28 pm 
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Stephen Challener wrote:
This isn't 100% on point for the prompt, but I really enjoyed reading this story in particular:
http://www.hafizgemstones.com/Peridot-minetrip.htm
His English isn't perfect but it just adds to the charm.


Reminds me a little of Borat :mrgreen:


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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 3:33 pm 
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He's a braver man than I, dropping it down there - those things have teeth! :D


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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 4:28 pm 
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Inky

We had the most interesting neighbour when we had our old claims at Russian gully when I was little. His real name was Graham but everyone out there just called him Inky, owing to the fact that he was smothered from head to toe in tattoos. Exactly where eccentricity becomes madness I don't know but he seemed to be continually stepping back and forward across that line.

Dad first met him during the construction boom in the early 70's - Gladstone being a perfect natural harbour for exporting Queenslands mineral resources. "There's this strange-looking bloke at the gates, no boots on his feet - says he wants a job". Dad got him a job on site, he was actually quite handy with welding and basic mechanical things. But the other workers would continually run him down because of his appearance and his eccentric manner. After a couple of years he said to Dad "I've had enough of this, I'm going to give these sapphire fields a go". So he quit and left.

About two years later, Dad got a phone call - it was Inky, telling him about his little set up on the sapphire fields and inviting him to come out for a look. Dry, uninviting land, a ramshackle tin shack - but beautiful sapphires! Dad was hooked and pegged two small miners claims right beside Inky's, building a tin shack of our own that we used for almost a decade.

Inky was well-known as one of the fields more colourful characters. A former tattooist from South Australia, he had worked at Maralinga when the British Air Force conducted a series of above-ground atomic bomb tests in the desert. We always wondered if exposure to radiation had contributed to the way he was. He mostly got about the place dressed in a pair of thongs (flip-flops I think you call them) on his feet and a leather lap-lap (loincloth) that left little to the imagination. Except in the middle of winter, when he would wander down in the evening dressed in a jumper - and thongs and a leather lap-lap. Perfectly suitable attire for working down a hole in the Central QLD bush but not so good in public - the management of the shopping centre in the nearby town of Emerald barred him from the place, telling him that if he wanted to shop there, he would have to wear clothes :D I remember the time we took our rather straight-laced grandmother out there. We were just setting up and Inky comes wandering down in his usual dress standard. Grandmother looked him up and down with a stunned expression on her face - a Wildman, standing virtually naked, like a human canvas with more tattoo than skin. He looked at her and drawled "Yes grandma - I've even got one down there as well" :mrgreen: I still remember the sound of Russian gully at night, the hum of the generator - and Inky's laugh booming through the bush hundreds of yards away as he watched tv in his shack. He said once to mum "bring the kids up, cartoons are on tv". We sat on the rough concrete floor, staring at a swirling mass of grey and white dots with ghostly figures just visible and crackly, muffled sound - not exactly the best tv reception in the bush then, how the hell he was able to watch it I have no idea.

He was wily enough to play on his eccentricities - three times he was caught chainsawing timber in a nearby state forest to sell (there is a particular small tree there that is valued because the super-abundant termites will not eat it) and he would simply turn up to court looking like a hobo and more or less plead insanity. It worked the first couple of times but the third time the magistrate had enough and slapped him with a fine.

Then they finally put a small power line through the place right past his shack but it would cost money to connect to it - no problems, he understood enough about transformers to tap into it at night time, power his appliances and charge a bank of old car batteries for daytime use :)

Inky's shack is gone now, and all the old European immigrants that were at the gully when I was little are gone as well - but Inky is still out there, living not far from the gully, being cared for by friends now he is well into his eighties.

Got some old photos of him in his glory days, will scan and post them so you can see this is a real person :D


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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2016 6:34 pm 
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This is what I had in mind! Tell your tales.

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Fri May 06, 2016 10:11 am 
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It seems a world apart when you walk into the jewelry store and look at all the beauty on the shelf and then think of the really odd characters out there scratching at the dirt to provide that. Not every miner out there is a societal hide out. But they are generally very resourceful with the tools they have to work with. Inventing machines to help do the work. Sometimes with great success.
When my shop opens and customers walk in they will be greated with a book on the counter with tales of miners and prospectors. Some photos. And maybe when they walk out they will take with them a piece of jewelry and a better appreciation for the effort it took to bring that to them.

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 Post subject: Re: idea for a new thread here
PostPosted: Sat May 07, 2016 4:51 pm 
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I present the Wildman of the Central Queensland bush - Inky! Bet you can't guess which one is him :D Photos somewhere between 35 and 40 years old. He is a lot more heavily tattooed than he appears in the photos because he is heavily tanned and covered in dirt.

Image

Image

Pretty wild-looking piece of mining equipment as well, cobbled together from bits of old cars and trucks and other things found lying around. It's actually pretty ingenious if unnatractive, it was pulse jig, trommel and conveyor belt all in one, the conveyor belt running to the bottom of the hole (only about 8 feet deep, not a shaft) making the minimum amount of work. All he had to do was knock the wash out with a jackhammer and shovel it a couple of feet across to the end of the conveyor belt. This thing would definitely NOT pass Workplace Health and Safety standards today - but it worked.


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