Harry_Morant
Bronze Member
Its been quite a busy few days. Driving near work I noticed they were digging up the parade ground of the Royal Military College Duntroon which is one of the oldest military training establishments in Australia and is where the Australian Army trains its officers. Apparently a hole appeared under one of the cadets whilst on parade and then they found other voids and decided to rip it up all the asphalt over the original parade ground to replace it. They were digging it out to a depth of about four foot and carting all the dirt away in trucks. This seems too good an opportunity to waste so I went to speak to the site foreman. Apparently they separated the site into two areas. One area was where they had collapsed all these old houses that surrounded the parade ground into the site before paving it over many years ago. Unfortunately this has contaminated the site with asbestos and they had to ship the dirt 300 km to a disposal site. The other dirt was going straight from this site to another construction site where it was immediately being compacted. The foreman was friendly enough and interested in detecting but no go to detecting. So much for my idea of a great detecting weekend.
Friday night I did some more planning and picked a spot down near the river. I got up early and headed off to the spot which is a large sandy area where a lot of people swim. It was very very quiet with hardly a bip anywhere. I then noticed footprints going in straight lines back and forth. The place had been picked over the previous day.
I headed home to ponder what to do next. Around lunchtime I was sitting having a coffee looking over a book I have about old mine sites and settlements and came across a reference to a mining community from the 1860s where all the land where the village had been had been returned to farmland. I was packed and out the door in about 10 minutes flat.
The location was within an hours drive of where I live. I eventually found roughly where the site was. Now to find the owner. I stopped at one farmhouse and was directed down the road to another. I went there but found they had leased out the land to someone else. They were kind enough to give me a name and number - unfortunately there was no answer.
I figured that since I had come out this way I may as well look around. Driving down the road I was able to see an old brick chimney so I stopped at the nearest farmhouse. I was thwarted yet again as the lady who was there was just looking after the property whilst her daughter was away on holidays. Keep on driving down that road.
I then came across some old farm buildings which look to be late 1800s which were in very poor condition. Once again I stopped at the closest farmhouse to get permission. Once again it wasn't the right person but I got the name and number of the right person. This person didn't answer either. I thought I'd have one last go at getting through to the original person - this time they answered. I got permission - talk about happy as a pig in mud.
By this time it was after three in the afternoon. It was very windy, showers and with the wind chill it was about 36 degrees F (about 2 degrees C). Having come this far I wasn't going to be defeated by a little thing like hypothermia
Within ten metres of detecting I found a brass button and then nothing for the next hour and a half of walking up and down a field aside from the odd bit a metal here and there (mostly hand made nails which confirmed I was roughly in the right area). It was getting dark and I thought I'd try one last area. The detector started going off like crazy. Everywhere I dug now were old nails, cast iron, glass and broken ceramics - I'd found the old hut sites. I found a depression which looks like a rubbish hole but didn't get any hits from the detector so I'll leave that for another time. I was quickly running out of daylight and the cold was starting to get to me so I called it a day. I had picked up bits and pieces but didn't have a good look at them until I got home.
Once I'd cleaned up the fragments I found lots of different patterns of printed ceramics, fancy glass and great handmade nails. I found the thick base of one bottle which had 'R Cooper & Co Portobello' which turns out to be from the 1860s - definitely the right spot. No coins though - but it won't be long until I'm back there looking.....or at the other two sites where I'm yet to track down the owners
Friday night I did some more planning and picked a spot down near the river. I got up early and headed off to the spot which is a large sandy area where a lot of people swim. It was very very quiet with hardly a bip anywhere. I then noticed footprints going in straight lines back and forth. The place had been picked over the previous day.
I headed home to ponder what to do next. Around lunchtime I was sitting having a coffee looking over a book I have about old mine sites and settlements and came across a reference to a mining community from the 1860s where all the land where the village had been had been returned to farmland. I was packed and out the door in about 10 minutes flat.
The location was within an hours drive of where I live. I eventually found roughly where the site was. Now to find the owner. I stopped at one farmhouse and was directed down the road to another. I went there but found they had leased out the land to someone else. They were kind enough to give me a name and number - unfortunately there was no answer.
I figured that since I had come out this way I may as well look around. Driving down the road I was able to see an old brick chimney so I stopped at the nearest farmhouse. I was thwarted yet again as the lady who was there was just looking after the property whilst her daughter was away on holidays. Keep on driving down that road.
I then came across some old farm buildings which look to be late 1800s which were in very poor condition. Once again I stopped at the closest farmhouse to get permission. Once again it wasn't the right person but I got the name and number of the right person. This person didn't answer either. I thought I'd have one last go at getting through to the original person - this time they answered. I got permission - talk about happy as a pig in mud.
By this time it was after three in the afternoon. It was very windy, showers and with the wind chill it was about 36 degrees F (about 2 degrees C). Having come this far I wasn't going to be defeated by a little thing like hypothermia
Within ten metres of detecting I found a brass button and then nothing for the next hour and a half of walking up and down a field aside from the odd bit a metal here and there (mostly hand made nails which confirmed I was roughly in the right area). It was getting dark and I thought I'd try one last area. The detector started going off like crazy. Everywhere I dug now were old nails, cast iron, glass and broken ceramics - I'd found the old hut sites. I found a depression which looks like a rubbish hole but didn't get any hits from the detector so I'll leave that for another time. I was quickly running out of daylight and the cold was starting to get to me so I called it a day. I had picked up bits and pieces but didn't have a good look at them until I got home.
Once I'd cleaned up the fragments I found lots of different patterns of printed ceramics, fancy glass and great handmade nails. I found the thick base of one bottle which had 'R Cooper & Co Portobello' which turns out to be from the 1860s - definitely the right spot. No coins though - but it won't be long until I'm back there looking.....or at the other two sites where I'm yet to track down the owners
Attachments
Upvote
0
!!). Have you got any pre-decimals yet?
