SUNDAY 14 MAY RUBYVALE
Today was Mothers Day – and lovely weather, again.
We had discovered that eating meals outside the van, as we prefer to do, could be a hazard, due to the ultra-friendly scavenging lorikeets! I was not sure whether John or the birds got the major share of his breakfast, today.

John trying to eat his weetbix
I washed my bowls clothes, and the trial place mat for S, which I’d finished on Friday.
Walked around to the Miners Cottage and bought and sieved a big bucket of wash. There are a number of enterprises on the gemfields who sell buckets or barrows of wash – gravel they mine from their claims, usually from shafts too deep for fossickers like us. It is the easy way – and possibly the smartest – to go fossicking!
Our bucket cost us $15 and we found a couple of cutters.
Got chatting to the owner. He offered to sell us his claim, two accommodation flats and the mining gear, for $150,000. It seemed everything here was for sale – for a price!
The vacant block we’d seen the other day, being sold for rate arrears, fetched $18,000.
I had a phone message from S, and a call from V – nice to get.
Tea was corned beef I cooked and served with vegies.