WEDNESDAY 21 JULY GEMTREE
After breakfast, we went out to Mud Tank and went fossicking on the flats there.
We seemed to do quite well, working in an old hole and enlarging it.
Our makeshift zircon fossicking gear
It was hard work. John worked in the hole, digging out the soil and gravel, onto the big, coarse sieve that he made. Then he uses his “rocker” to sieve that product twice more, through finer sieves.
John sifting dug material, using a sieve on the rocker stand he made
Then it is my turn to wash that final sieve full – using our red camp gear container, full of water. Then I turn it out onto our table – again, camp gear – and sort through the wet stones to pick out anything that might be worth keeping.
A sieve full of washed gravel, ready for inspection
It is a good division of labour.
We took a break and ate lunch, then dug on for a while. Went back to camp mid afternoon.
John is following the layer of gravel
After I had cleaned up, made spicy corn chowder soup, and then fish cakes, for tea.
John had sharpened my vegie knife this morning, apparently, without telling me. Because it was unexpectedly sharp, it bounced off the board when I went to cut onion, and sliced some nail and the end off my left thumb. There was much blood! I band-aided it up, without telling John, who was outside, because he gets cross when I cut myself! Later, at night it became very sore, and I eventually had to confess about the reason for the bandaids.
We were quite weary from the mining and did not spend much time out at the fire.
John played computer games until the power died.
This Adventurous Age 