Living Off Grid to detect for Gold in Outback Australia
G'day and welcome to the channel. Krissy and I live full time out in the bush and we've got a pretty basic camp setup that I'm going to show you later on today. So stick around, have a look at the video and if you like it, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and we'll see you a bit later. Yeah, that definitely sounds sweet so we'll give that one a dig.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to see what's happening now. Ah, I can see it! That's got to be a bit of gold! Yeah detecting in general is a lot of fun, especially when you're picking up gold but unfortunately that really hasn't been the case lately. Mark and I spent some time out prospecting. We just didn't manage to get onto the gold but it just changed because I picked up a little subgramer. How good is that, right there out of that hole there. Super rough,
so the reef is not far away. It actually goes up that hill back there, there's a little bit of a quartz outcrop there. We just parked the bike over there, this is how far I walked, let it be 20 meters and now there's gold here. It's been a few days - very, very quiet - we've
put in a few kilometers every day and yeah, finally we arrived in the right area. That's Mark through the trees back there. I already signposted him that I've got a gold here because we don't want to yell out. There are other people around, finally we are picking up a few nuggets ourselves. Yeah now that I know that there is gold in the area I have a good look around until I find the next piece and then I can start working the area between the two nuggets. Hopefully I'll find another one. Wish me luck! I'll fill in the hole and then I'll keep going.
Okay, it's been a pretty quiet morning and I just got my first target here that sounds promising. It doesn't sound overly big but it definitely sounds like it's worth a dig. I'll give you a listen. Yeah, that definitely sounds sweet. We'll give that one a dig, hopefully it's a piece of gold.
There it is, definitely coming off that piece of quartz there. So it looks like it might be a bit of a speci there. Yeah it's pretty dirty, I think it's going to be hard to clean it up out here, I think I'll wait till I get back to camp and I'll hit it with a toothbrush and some water and yeah I'm pretty sure there's going to be a bit of gold in that but probably not a great deal but I'm pretty sure it's gold. You beauty! Yeah this one here is a really interesting area. Yeah it's very noisy, there is a big bit of EMI in the air and also I'm right next to an old fence line here. Yeah that looks like an old sheep fence so this fence is not even in use anymore but yeah, there's a signal right next to the fence line.
Yeah, it is a bit noisy but it's got that nice warble sound to it which could be a bent piece of wire which wouldn't be a surprising spot to find wire. Yeah I'm struggling a bit with this signal here. It's very noisy plus the fence is that close that yeah I don't even know if there's really something there or not but just to satisfy my mind I'm gonna dig a bit deeper. Okay, so now the hole is wide enough for the coil to get a proper swing in there. Yeah I'm looking forward to see what's happening now.
Yeah I'd say there's definitely something in the hole here, it sounds like the target is going to be a bit deeper. The target is still in there, I can hear the warble sound. I'm more hopeful now that it might be a piece of gold but yeah wire makes the same noise so I'll just have to dig deeper and get it out. Ah, I can see it. I can see it there. How nice! That is a decent, well it's a bigger piece of gold anyway compared to what I've found lately. Nice one. It is gold right on the fence line here. It's not easy detecting that close to a fence line because you'll get interferences on your detector being that close but yeah, I'll try to get as close as possible because there is gold in the area here and I have seen detector holes further back and yeah not too many would concentrate on detecting this fence line here properly. There is gold here and this piece here, I reckon, it's close to a gram.
This one here is a bit smoother than the first piece. Good one, I'm so happy about this one. Like I said it's been so quiet lately and we've done all these kilometers, walking, walking, walking, and we just did not manage to get onto the gold but it looks like my luck has changed now. Yeah I've just got my second target here, well the second nice sounding target, a little bit of rubbish about but yeah this one doesn't sound too bad at all. I'll give you a bit of a listen.
Yeah that sounds likely to be gold. We'll give that one a bit of a dig. Yeah it sounds pretty nice now. Yeah that one's still in the hole so yeah that sounds promising. Yeah it could be a nice piece. Yeah okay, I'm starting to get a bit excited now, it's still in the hole and sounding pretty good. That's got to be a bit of gold.
Okay it's out of the hole. Okay there it is, it's a nice little speci. Yeah that looks like it's got a bit of gold in it. Yeah it looks like it's going right through the middle of that piece of quartz there so that is a nice piece. That should clean up really nice. That's the second speci from this spot here this afternoon so yeah very happy about that and yeah hopefully they keep rolling now because it's been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks and it's nice to see some gold again. I just had a super faint signal down here, dug it out and it was actually the first rock I waved over the coil. It's a quartz rock so the signal is definitely coming of this one here.
It's not very strong but I can't see any gold on here either. So I only heard it like that but when I wave it from this side so that means there has to be gold or something... Here, I can see it now. There, that's gold in there, tiny little specks.
Nice, very good. It's another piece of gold of this area so that is awesome. Yeah I'll clean this up back at the camp and yeah, it should be a nice looking specimen. Look at the spot, right where this outcrop is. I expected little chips of dozer blade here because somebody's pushed up these quartz rocks here and I expected that that was giving me a signal of this rock here but now that I can see the gold I know what's giving the signal. Wasn't very deep and that's where the quartz has been dug up. Awesome, very good but yeah Mark is actually waiting back there near the bike so we're gonna call it a day for today and I'm sure we'll be back out here tomorrow.
Okay so here's that speci I've got today. I've just hit it with a toothbrush and some soapy water and it's shown all the gold just on this end piece right here. It doesn't really have any more gold in it other than what's showing right there on the top but yeah, a nice speci just the same. Nice looking gold there but yeah a nice little speci and the other piece I got was this piece here. How well did that clean up.
There's actually got a fair bit of gold running through it. Yeah nice one. Okay, I'll throw that one on the scales and show you. Okay there it is, the speci.
6.82. So that's gotta be at least, I don't know, 2.5 grams at least of gold in that one. Nice one, so yeah, not too bad between that and that I'd say probably 3 grams for the day at least. Pretty happy about that, it's nice to be finally on some gold again. We've had a little bit of a drought at the moment so yeah it's good to actually have some gold on the scales again. Yeah this one here is the specie that I picked up. I think it was straight off the reef there. Yeah you can see the rough bits of gold in there, looks really really nice. So I had two nuggets,
I'll start with a smaller one. 0.2 of a gram. That was a really really rough bit and then I got this one here which is a little bit more worn and also bigger. So yeah I'm thinking this one here might be a gram. This is the piece I got straight off the fence line there. I'm hoping for a gram. Oh, that's 1.5 in total. So 1.29 that one. Really, really good; plus what's in here so that would be
roughly a 2 gram day I think. Really really good. I'm happy with that. As I said, I'll give you a bit of a walk around our camp and we'll just do a basic overview of what we've got here and how we live in the bush full-time. This is the FJ Cruiser, this is what I drive around. So we use the FJ to tow the trailer because it just tends to tow it a bit nicer than the the Troopy. It's got a bit of a lift in it and a winch and a second battery in it. So the basics of what you need to travel out in the bush. Yeah another way we get around the bush once we've set up camp is on the quad bike here. This is actually Krissy's quad bike and
we just poke around on this and it's got four wheel drive and a diff lock and the automatic transmission and it actually has been a very reliable bike for a chinese bike. It's a CF moto. It's definitely a good way of getting around in the bush, being able to cover more area. A lot of the time we walk because obviously you can't detect while you're on the
bike and yeah you'll often ride over gold without even knowing it. So yes, walk as much as you can but yeah sometimes it helps to have a bike or even get in the vehicle and go a bit further away from camp. Okay, we're going to start with our trailer setup. It is basically a Ford Ranger tub on a custom-built chassis which I actually bought like this and I've just done a few improvements to make it suit us. It's got the rooftop tent on it
and basically that makes it easy for us to set up camp and move on as well, pack up and move on and also our camp's always set up with the trailer. We can actually move the vehicles around as we need to. So yeah, we've had this tent only a few months and yeah you won't find the link in the description below because it's not something that we actually recommend. It
was a cheaper option at the time and yeah it's not something that I would really recommend, that brand of tent anyway. Yeah like I said, it's a custom built trailer and they've put a quad bike rack up on the front here. So basically you've got those two runs down there where the bike parks up on or you can put two single motorbikes up there but yeah the quad bike fits up there really nice. Also on the front here, I've built a bit of a shower attachment. It
just makes it easy just to fold that arm out and have a quick shower at the end of the day. Yeah open plan living around here. So we do have a shower tent but it's a bit windy up here, we're actually camped up on top of a bit of a hill here, so it's a bit too breezy to have the shower tent. If any of you had a camp shower tent you'll know what I'm talking about, they don't seem to last very long in the wind at all. So that's away at the moment and yeah while it's nice and warm outside and there's no breeze then we'll just have an outdoor shower. The trailer also has a water tank built into it
there. So there's a fill point there and we've got a tap coming out just here and a switch. Yeah nice and easy to get water out of there. Yeah while we've got our camp set up and the bikes actually off the trailer we'll use this front area just to set up a little bit of a kitchen area and just to store a few items too. Also the jerry cans they all get strapped towards the headboard there which go in behind the bike. So yeah they're nice and protected in behind there when we're traveling and we carry some fuel for the bike as well as for the FJ. We've also got the Toyota Troopcarrier here. This is actually Krissy's car, this is what she drives around and this is where we carry all
the water and the fridges. We've basically got a fridge and a freezer in here as well. This one's pretty handy too because it's got the good roof rack on it as well so any extra items that we've got then we can just um put up there. Krissy's car, yeah, it's got a slight suspension lift in it as well, as well as the dual batteries and the winch as well which is the minimum you kind of really want when you want to go out bush. Yeah the whole camp is powered by solar of course and 12 Volt batteries. We've basically got a movable solar panel there,
a movable solar panel there, we've got one on top of Krissy's car and we've got one on top of my car and basically they've all got separate batteries as well which is a short-proof way that you always got one solar system working. So three independent systems there. Okay we've also got a Yagi antenna on a Wi-Fi unit here to give us a bit of internet in those remote areas. We don't always get the internet where we are or phone signal but sometimes if you're high up on a hill right out in the outback you can manage to get one bar so that's why we've got this Yagi antenna. This is basically our kitchen setup right here. We use a two burner stove and we've got a table here, we've got a cover over our our kitchen here. We do have an awning that we pull out from
here sometimes but sometimes it's just easier to park the Troopy there and put this awning across to the Troopy. It's easy to take down when it gets windy which it does quite a lot. So yeah a bit of an open plan kitchen here, it's not the best in the weather, if we get any rain or wind and we usually get them both at the same time then it's pretty much impossible here to cook anything so we usually have something cold and we sit in the car for dinner. Come around here and I'll show you another room of the house. Yeah so if you just come through this corridor here you come to our living room. So this is the living room here, this is where we relax after detecting and two chairs, nice and simple, and the table. We don't have a lounge unfortunately but yeah, this does us and same thing it's open plan living with the lounge room as well. That's the way we like, it's nice and breezy and as long as we can keep that sun out of the lounge room then we're pretty happy.
Yeah, so this is basically our little storage room and also our pantry. So all our dry food for the pantry is in both these drawers. They're full length slide out drawers. So yeah, they hold enough food. Basically we could stay out about a month at a time with the food that we can carry, just we can only stay out two weeks at a time with the water that we can carry. So there's our biggest issue, is the water. It's just very heavy and takes up quite a lot of room so we're limited by our water supply. Also here, we've got a battery system in the trailer here
and we've got USB outlets and all the solar controllers and switches and fuses in there and that basically allows us to charge up all our detectors, phones, cameras and everything else that we've got. We pretty much travel in the two cars and have this trailer because of the amount of gear that we do carry. There is some stuff that we could probably cut back on but at the moment this is the setup that we've got. The two cars, and it's a bit safer having the two cars as well because yeah if one breaks down or something happens we do have another car. This is what we can afford at the moment so we'd like to go back to one car but yeah to get one car to carry everything we need, we just don't have the funds for that. Yeah, the trick is get out there with what you've got and give it a go. You don't really need all the luxuries of
life so yeah just get out there and give it a go. So there you go, just a quick walk around today, maybe at a later date I'll go into a bit more detail and show you our solar systems and and talk about how much water we do carry but we'll leave that for a later date. And yeah, hope you enjoyed the video today, give it a like and I hope to catch you on the next one. Stay safe out there! Make-up, make-up
2021-01-26 00:20
