Mick in Dubbo
New member
while those of us with detecting toys went out to play.
especially as I was now in Sydney; my happy hunting ground. (Sometimes I wish we still lived there.) Got up around 5am each morning for several hours of detecting pleasure. (As a night owl, it just was a struggle for the first half hour.
)
The first 2 mornings were spent hunting in bark chips but was abandoned do to poor results. After this, it was time to hunt the spots that I really had been wanting to hunt but hadn't. The first location was the park that was right next the the Olympic Stadium for the Sydney Olympics. It has the Olympic Cauldron in one corner. This park has hosted rock concerts and a number of other community events in it. The first hour turned up around $6. The second hour only turned up another dollar. Due to parking time limits and increasing traffic, I called it quits here but sure enjoyed hunting in such a pleasant environment. sorry, I didn't have a camera with me.
The next 2 days I walked 15 Min's to my next hunting ground. it was in a park that is only a 100m aways from 2 major roads that literally has 100s of 1000s of cars going past it, yet it is not visible from the road. I pulled up $63 here last year, so Was keen to see how the GTI 1500 armed with the 10x5 Scorcher coil would go. ( I used this coil for most of my hunts on this trip. It's a very handy coil, although it doesn't give imaging information, it has a faster recovery speed and by listening to signal with in relationship to the screen, gave some great target information.) Day 1 resulted in half the ground being covered and $56.65 and one Shilling being found. Day 2 ended with $52.65 and a chain bracket being recovered.
The next day I committed an act of utter madness and arose at 4:30am to go and hunt a park behind a popular Sydney beach. Checking out the parking signs at 5am with bleary eyes proved costly, as I parked the car the wrong way around and attracted an $81 fine. Ouch.:sad: Anyway, I finally got to hunt this spot for which I have been wanting to do for more than 12 months. Finds were surprising few, so I switched to hunting the beach (South Cronulla). After 3 hours I had covered the main area of this beach thanks to having the DD coil on and recovered around $24. A life guard told me that quite a few detectorists had hit this beach the previous afternoon. They missed a lot! I then proceeded back to the park only to be told by a local that that part of the park had been re-turfed only 3 months prior.
Little wonder I wasn't finding much. I switched to a different part of the park and armed myself with the X-Terra 30. Pulled out $28.90 over the next 2.5 hours
On New Years Day I planned my big hunt on the Sydney foreshore. I did a recky hunt earlier in the week to find what I thought would be productive. The first place I hunted was an oval called Birchgrove oval at Balmain. It took over an hour for the penny to drop as to why this name seemed so familiar. It was the birthplace of professional Rugby League and celebrated it's 100the anniversary only 8 months ago. I have a newspaper clipping with pictures of that first game in my possession. There was a forehead slap. I'll hunt this spot at a later date, but once again after a local came to the rescue with useful information and told me that the next par around (Mort Bay Park) would be more productive and upon arriving, my find rate doubled. I also discovered that in this historical park was our nations first dry dock. You can see it's outline in one of the photos. Also, in 1942 a small anti aircraft ship called the HMAS Dubbo was built! Cool!
Back to New Years Day. fer a 4 hour sleep, I arose at 5:30am to hunt this site. Arriving at 6, all but one small group of party goers had gone home after watching the Fire works display over the harbour the previous midnight. It attracts 1.2 million people to the harbour foreshore each year. the level of rubbish was horrendous, and often resulted in me using the GTI as a prop to visually scan the ground for coins. The crown caps were prolific, yet despite this and the fact that I was armed with a DD coil, I found that I could still usually tell crown caps from coins despite the fact that they were coming though on the same notches that I was interested in. I hunted 3 parks that day, including the park beside Balmain jetty, which yielded up one of my oldest coins ever, a 1921 penny at 3in. I loved finding that. I also found a number of Foreign coins which include 2 modern English pennies, 5 Euro cents and a Kiwi (New Zealand) Dollar coin. I returned back to Mort Bay Park hoping to finish with a total of $110 for the day. I found several more $1 and $2 coins and with only 60 cents to go and being extremely thirsty, I could not find another cent! Not even for a whole hour! It was around 5pm at this time and I'd been going non stop. the temp was in the mid 30's (Celsius) (in the 90's on the old Fahrenheit scale) and as I'd been nursing a pretty decent headache for a due to a lack of water, I decided that it was time to abandon the park and hit my goal in a play ground that I drove past on the way over. I had been carrying water, but there was nowhere to refill here. I bought a drink as soon as I could find a shop and hit my goal at the said spot. On a count of my finds, I'd found that I'd actually already hit it when trying to find that last 60c.
This hunt set an all time record for me with a total of $118.45 found for the day! The cost of not drinking enough was made known to me that nigh as I suffered from a bout of heat stress. It took to yesterday till I recovered properly from it. Make sure you keep your fluids up to yourself when hunting. Heat stress ain't fun.
I had a rest day the next day and the day after, got up at a more civilised hour (7am) and walked down to the park down the end of the side street of where I was staying. A large gathering was held in this park on the previous day as a Muslim prayer vidual come protect over the Israel Palestine conflict. It was featured in the Sydney news. I recovered around $24 in a couple of hours, some of which were coins dropped from the previous day and some of which was 5-6 inches down in the thickest grass that I've ever seen! As I'm usually armed with a screwdriver, I normally only recover down to 4 inches, as it's too had to go deeper with a screwdriver.
In all I had a ripper of a time down there and only wished I could hunt there frequently. My total for the trip was $351. So I'm more than happy with that.
[attachment 115052 DSCF0150.JPG]
This is the View of Sydney Harbour Bridge from this park. Looking over Goat Island.
[attachment 115053 DSCF0154.JPG]
You can see the outline of the former dry dock in the park.
[attachment 115055 DSCF0153.JPG]
This is the rest of Mort Bay Park, the scene of the crime.
[attachment 115056 DSCF0189.JPG]
These are the better finds which include the foreign coins, the 1921 penny and a 1959 silver Shilling. The animal on the face of the coin is a Marino sheep.
[attachment 115057 DSCF0191.JPG]
And last but not least is all my finds which include $351 in modern coins.
Mick Evans.
especially as I was now in Sydney; my happy hunting ground. (Sometimes I wish we still lived there.) Got up around 5am each morning for several hours of detecting pleasure. (As a night owl, it just was a struggle for the first half hour.)The first 2 mornings were spent hunting in bark chips but was abandoned do to poor results. After this, it was time to hunt the spots that I really had been wanting to hunt but hadn't. The first location was the park that was right next the the Olympic Stadium for the Sydney Olympics. It has the Olympic Cauldron in one corner. This park has hosted rock concerts and a number of other community events in it. The first hour turned up around $6. The second hour only turned up another dollar. Due to parking time limits and increasing traffic, I called it quits here but sure enjoyed hunting in such a pleasant environment. sorry, I didn't have a camera with me.
The next 2 days I walked 15 Min's to my next hunting ground. it was in a park that is only a 100m aways from 2 major roads that literally has 100s of 1000s of cars going past it, yet it is not visible from the road. I pulled up $63 here last year, so Was keen to see how the GTI 1500 armed with the 10x5 Scorcher coil would go. ( I used this coil for most of my hunts on this trip. It's a very handy coil, although it doesn't give imaging information, it has a faster recovery speed and by listening to signal with in relationship to the screen, gave some great target information.) Day 1 resulted in half the ground being covered and $56.65 and one Shilling being found. Day 2 ended with $52.65 and a chain bracket being recovered.
The next day I committed an act of utter madness and arose at 4:30am to go and hunt a park behind a popular Sydney beach. Checking out the parking signs at 5am with bleary eyes proved costly, as I parked the car the wrong way around and attracted an $81 fine. Ouch.:sad: Anyway, I finally got to hunt this spot for which I have been wanting to do for more than 12 months. Finds were surprising few, so I switched to hunting the beach (South Cronulla). After 3 hours I had covered the main area of this beach thanks to having the DD coil on and recovered around $24. A life guard told me that quite a few detectorists had hit this beach the previous afternoon. They missed a lot! I then proceeded back to the park only to be told by a local that that part of the park had been re-turfed only 3 months prior.
Little wonder I wasn't finding much. I switched to a different part of the park and armed myself with the X-Terra 30. Pulled out $28.90 over the next 2.5 hoursOn New Years Day I planned my big hunt on the Sydney foreshore. I did a recky hunt earlier in the week to find what I thought would be productive. The first place I hunted was an oval called Birchgrove oval at Balmain. It took over an hour for the penny to drop as to why this name seemed so familiar. It was the birthplace of professional Rugby League and celebrated it's 100the anniversary only 8 months ago. I have a newspaper clipping with pictures of that first game in my possession. There was a forehead slap. I'll hunt this spot at a later date, but once again after a local came to the rescue with useful information and told me that the next par around (Mort Bay Park) would be more productive and upon arriving, my find rate doubled. I also discovered that in this historical park was our nations first dry dock. You can see it's outline in one of the photos. Also, in 1942 a small anti aircraft ship called the HMAS Dubbo was built! Cool!
Back to New Years Day. fer a 4 hour sleep, I arose at 5:30am to hunt this site. Arriving at 6, all but one small group of party goers had gone home after watching the Fire works display over the harbour the previous midnight. It attracts 1.2 million people to the harbour foreshore each year. the level of rubbish was horrendous, and often resulted in me using the GTI as a prop to visually scan the ground for coins. The crown caps were prolific, yet despite this and the fact that I was armed with a DD coil, I found that I could still usually tell crown caps from coins despite the fact that they were coming though on the same notches that I was interested in. I hunted 3 parks that day, including the park beside Balmain jetty, which yielded up one of my oldest coins ever, a 1921 penny at 3in. I loved finding that. I also found a number of Foreign coins which include 2 modern English pennies, 5 Euro cents and a Kiwi (New Zealand) Dollar coin. I returned back to Mort Bay Park hoping to finish with a total of $110 for the day. I found several more $1 and $2 coins and with only 60 cents to go and being extremely thirsty, I could not find another cent! Not even for a whole hour! It was around 5pm at this time and I'd been going non stop. the temp was in the mid 30's (Celsius) (in the 90's on the old Fahrenheit scale) and as I'd been nursing a pretty decent headache for a due to a lack of water, I decided that it was time to abandon the park and hit my goal in a play ground that I drove past on the way over. I had been carrying water, but there was nowhere to refill here. I bought a drink as soon as I could find a shop and hit my goal at the said spot. On a count of my finds, I'd found that I'd actually already hit it when trying to find that last 60c.
This hunt set an all time record for me with a total of $118.45 found for the day! The cost of not drinking enough was made known to me that nigh as I suffered from a bout of heat stress. It took to yesterday till I recovered properly from it. Make sure you keep your fluids up to yourself when hunting. Heat stress ain't fun. I had a rest day the next day and the day after, got up at a more civilised hour (7am) and walked down to the park down the end of the side street of where I was staying. A large gathering was held in this park on the previous day as a Muslim prayer vidual come protect over the Israel Palestine conflict. It was featured in the Sydney news. I recovered around $24 in a couple of hours, some of which were coins dropped from the previous day and some of which was 5-6 inches down in the thickest grass that I've ever seen! As I'm usually armed with a screwdriver, I normally only recover down to 4 inches, as it's too had to go deeper with a screwdriver.
In all I had a ripper of a time down there and only wished I could hunt there frequently. My total for the trip was $351. So I'm more than happy with that.
[attachment 115052 DSCF0150.JPG]
This is the View of Sydney Harbour Bridge from this park. Looking over Goat Island.
[attachment 115053 DSCF0154.JPG]
You can see the outline of the former dry dock in the park.
[attachment 115055 DSCF0153.JPG]
This is the rest of Mort Bay Park, the scene of the crime.
[attachment 115056 DSCF0189.JPG]
These are the better finds which include the foreign coins, the 1921 penny and a 1959 silver Shilling. The animal on the face of the coin is a Marino sheep.
[attachment 115057 DSCF0191.JPG]
And last but not least is all my finds which include $351 in modern coins.
Mick Evans.
man it looks like the NSW detectorists will have slim pickings for a wile thats a hell of a pile of loot there 
& good to see ya pulled some oldies out to.
