26/05/2026
What a trip out to the Patch!! Headed out Sun 10 solo this time as Jas was caravanning at Lucky Bay. Set up and had a couple hours spare so headed out to the patch to test out the new Coiltek Goldhawk 14 x 9 mono coil I treated myself to after our last trip. Now I am a bit of a sceptic on all the hype about aftermarket coils but this thing blew all sceptimism away in the short 2 hour stint. Same ground that had been over 5 times with our other coils – pulled 1.8g’s straight up – nearly half paid off.
Monday back over the same ground, another 20g’s - a $4k day. Coil and trip paid for and some profit – nice.
Tues my lower left back fully cramped and I could barely get up/down or walk BUT after 9 Panadol, 9 Nurofen and a longer lunch break was back at it.
On Wed the old saying was nagging me – never leave gold to find gold so I decided to test our theory – prickly gold = close to the source. So I started benching out the patch – removing the top 300mm of dirt, detecting it and then detecting the fresh ground and extra depth. This led to some decent nugs and a substantial hole – I called the spa hole. The ground below was hardpack mud/clay and heavy going on the big mattock/pick. Fair work out. By Saturday I had 40g’s - over an ounce!
Then came Sunday, got a soft target on the west end of patch, I started digging, it started getting louder – I was pulling consistent gold but it kept screaming – deeper!! By 4:30pm I’d gone around 500mm down and still screaming! Knock off time – it'll be there in the morning, it’ s been there for millions of years what’s 12 hours. Up to this point I had 146 nuggets, although some were flys**t so nugget is very generous in description.
So Monday back to the hole thinking it’ll be out in a minute, hit 600mm and still pulling good gold then the big one came out – big for me anyway – a beautiful spikey 17g nugget I call the seahorse. So glad the pick didn’t hit it. Anyway on that day I ended up pulling 83.83g’s!! As much as our last trip total in a day!! Trip total stood at 136g’s - a cool $27,800. With a week to go anything was possible on the patch.
Tues I pulled another 3g’s out, Wed another 2g’s, Thurs another 4g’s, Fri another 3.5g’s. Late Fri and most of Sat the plan was start filling the “hole” back in – I'm guessing approx 6m3 of soil to go back in. No big deal I filled our pool in - 26m3 in 2 days. So the plan was to fill around 50-100mm, detect it and repeat. I knew they’d be gold I missed as some nugs were wrapped inside clay rocks, were small and if orientated the wrong way the first time just got missed. By the time the hole was filled I retrieved another 2g’s.
Late Saturday I packed down and got ready for the 9 hour drive home starting at 4am and calling in for the required Kalgoorlie Macca’s brekky.
The weather was cherry ripe all week, bar the last Friday – windy with some rain, a bit fresh in the mornings and the fly numbers low. I did get the obligatory visit from Mr Crow who didn’t get into my bin bag BUT did steal my bar of soap I had sitting on the shower tree branch!!
The trip total 152.47g’s of WA’s finest – albeit dirty and a few grams will be lost I don’t ever recall being paid $31k to dig a hole in 2 weeks and I’ve dug quite a few holes in my time.
I’ll get the trip vid together over the next week or so – of course the cam failed the day the big one came out OR maybe I was that excited I forgot to press record??
Anyway me and the Bro will be heading back out in 2.5 weeks for another dig adventure.
