"No matter where you go, there you are."

GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS...... SO THEY SAY
MARYBOROUGH (VIC)

Friday 5^th January:
We made it through Melbourne without a hiccup and arrived in Maryborough early afternoon. Maryborough is in central Victoria and is in an area known as the “Golden Triangle”. It was very hot, (35 degrees), so we decided to leave the detecting until tomorrow. We bought ourselves a pick to go with the 2^nd hand detector we bought in Wonthaggi, so now we are set to find that big "nugget" (not).

Saturday 6^th January:
Our first full day of gold detecting in the goldfields. We left early and headed off towards Avoca. The countryside all around Maryborough is covered in diggings, there are large mounds and holes everywhere. We worked an area all morning, getting good signals, digging holes and finding BULLETS! There is an incredible amount of metal rubbish in the bush. It’s gets very frustrating after you’ve dug a large hole only to find a bottle top or bullet casing. We returned to the van for lunch and a rest then headed out again to another spot in the afternoon. No gold but we did enjoy walking around the bush.

Sunday 7^th January:
We put in another full day today in various areas around Maryborough. At least we are getting a lot of exercise. The muscles were a bit sore this morning from swinging the pick.

Monday 8^th January:
We drove out past Avoca and up into the Pyrenees State Forest to try our luck again. There was some spectacular views across the countryside from the top of the mountains. There was a lot of leaf litter which made detecting a little harder. After getting a bit lost on the many tracks in the forest we finally found our way back to Avoca for some lunch. We tried some old diggings on the road back to Maryborough but still no gold. We had a chat with our neighbours in the van park and they showed us the gold they had found (bugger!). So now we have proof it's out there we've just got to find it.

Tuesday 9^th January:
We teamed up with our neighbours, Phil and Chris and they showed us where they had found their gold the previous day. We all worked together in the area for a few hours but none of us had any luck. We headed back to the van for an early lunch then did some sightseeing out past Dunolly. We visited the historic township of Waanyarra. There wasn’t much left to distinguish the settlement except for the cemetery and one old building that used to be the pub.