Gold Fever Part 1

Tamika had been waiting patiently to test out her brand new metal detector and The Goldfields, or the Golden Triangle as it is also known as, was our next destination. Now to say Tamika had a keen interest in gold prospecting would not even come close. Many a night, I’d be woken by the Ipad screen and there, bathed in the flicker, would be Tamika watching season 58 of Klondike Kapers with the dynamite, the heavy machinery and the toothless grins of the great unwashed, as they made their fortunes. Now, even though OUR equipment was way more modest, I could only see a lot of digging and pain ahead (and gold..of course).

We left Halls Gap early and enjoyed a downhill run to Bendigo. We were intending to free camp on the outskirts, but once again, marginal internet and somewhat oversold locations forced us into a caravan park. Still, we caught up with the washing and headed into the goldfields the next morning with gold dust in our eyes and clean sheets on the bed. Castlemaine was our first stop. With our beloved Swans playing that day, we located some parking next to the local footy ground, set up the internet and I set out to explore the town. Now this was my first historic goldfields town and you could see that once upon a time, it did very well indeed.

Tamika had been waiting patiently to test out her brand new metal detector and The Goldfields, or the Golden Triangle as it is also known as, was our next destination. Now to say Tamika had a keen interest in gold prospecting would not even come close. Many a night, I’d be woken by the Ipad screen and there, bathed in the flicker, would be Tamika watching season 58 of Klondike Kapers with the dynamite, the heavy machinery and the toothless grins of the great unwashed, as they made their fortunes. Now, even though OUR equipment was way more modest, I could only see a lot of digging and pain ahead (and gold..of course).

We left Halls Gap early and enjoyed a downhill run to Bendigo. We were intending to free camp on the outskirts, but once again, marginal internet and somewhat oversold locations forced us into a caravan park. Still, we caught up with the washing and headed into the goldfields the next morning with gold dust in our eyes and clean sheets on the bed. Castlemaine was our first stop. With our beloved Swans playing that day, we located some parking next to the local footy ground, set up the internet and I set out to explore the town. Now this was my first historic goldfields town and you could see that once upon a time, it did very well indeed.

The town had a nice feel to it and the bonus of cool jazz coming from a side street added to the impression of a community that was making an effort to be noticed. So, back to the van, lunch and a footy game. Now, what you DON’T do, is leave your car’s battery connected to the van for 5 hours while running the fridge. Our victory grins were short lived when we had a no start for the trip south. RACV got as going an hour later and, somewhat chastened, we headed off towards yet another red dot on Google Maps.

Now you’d think after our last experience, we might have been a little more, um, circumspect, even suspicious of a free camp location down a dirt road in the middle of a forest. But trusting fools we were. How could technology get it wrong twice? I mean, it’s Google….. So we sailed past a perfectly good, level site on the main road in search of a fools gold site in the heart of the diggings. We turned right about 600 metres past that perfectly good site onto a dirt road that looked perfectly reasonable to start, but by a couple of k’s later, was looking decidedly uninterested in getting us to our destination. I was forced to reconnoitre on foot and my eye caught some road base just a few meters to my right through the undergrowth. Ah, there’s the turnoff. Back to the Jeep and twenty metres further. Only then did the horror become clear. That was no road. It was just a clearing. We were trapped on a dead end road pointing in the wrong direction. This was NOT good. Were we going to save our arses with an Outback Truckers style escape plan or THIS guy’s? (to be continued)