2019 MUSTER

First topic message reminder :

Hi all,
getting in early as i do, for this seasons annual muster,
last years muster up at Doolgunna was a great success due to all the wonderful people who attended, it was great to meet the new members as well as catch up with all the old faithfuls. a great time was had by all and some nice gold found.

The admins of Detecting West Australian Gold would like to thank you all for your diligence with the prospecting guide lines. no rubbish was left behind, all gates left as they were found, all holes filled in, keeping clear of homesteads and minimal track damage, well done everyone.
I would also encourage you all to keep on top of your 40E obligations of reporting, it may be late but still ensure you have reported your finds as he sheer amount of information supplied to the lease holders of gold discovered ETC provides them with targeted exploration areas yielding better returns on their investment so by completing 40E reports its a win win situation for all.

Anyone interested please start dropping suggestions of places and time frames for the 2019 muster, we usually do 1st August to 8th but im open to suggestions.  
I have a few places in mind but would like to encourage others to participate and maybe lease holders to offer their leases for some quality exploration.
There is still heaps of great gold still to be found in WA, its a massive place and gold turns up in the most unlikely places as i have discovered over the last few years.
over to you....
cheers

Hi Martin, Bad news, we will not make the muster, our new van still is not finished. It is now due 'next week' which is slightly better than a couple of weeks time, but not in time for the muster. We will hope to see you next year. Regretfully, Joe & Howard

No worries guys, always next year. Hope all comes good and the van ends up perfect for you.
Cheers

Good Luck everybody! Bad timing has stopped my wife for the 1st time and I rolling up to add to the giggles. Hopefully sorted for next year. Make sure there's plenty of pics for us Nuggie Dreamers!

I know everyone will be extremely disappointed  but I've had a big spanner thrown at my plans and I won't be able to attend the muster.
So good luck to all attending and tease the crap out of me with lots of pics of the filthy gold you find.
Enjoy yourselves and hopefully I'll see ya's next year.
Cheers
Cliff

Sorry to hear you guys will be missing out.....



If you need any encouragement just take a peek at the little rock in the middle of Mrs M's photo.....

is it the not so little rock Phil?
it look's like a monster mate.
find of a lifetime

Thanks Martin and Karen and all involved with this years muster, I appreciate the effort you guys put in to bring a great bunch of folk together, these are memory’s I’ll never forget.
Hopefully see you all and more next year.
Ty

We Muster come to the right place.

You mightn’t have heard but we spotted a bird
It was the golden goose on the loose.



Next thing we spotted something big and round
It was right there lying on the ground.



Mrs M went “Shoo!” and off it flew
In its haste it dropped another, then there were two.



What will we do now that we have two?
One for me and one for you.



They are too big for two of us to eat
We could fry them up for Wednesday’s meet.



I think they’re worth their weight in gold
Let’s just keep them safe until we’re old.

DWAG Muster 2019

Thankyou Martin. We cool muster this year....



Very cool ........

Geese Phil, I was looking forward to a Aussie quiche, but the curry had my mouth watering.

Well that was a muster and a half. Both kas and myself really appreciate all your attendance at this year's muster. Some gold was won but more importantly great companionship and laughs for the week. Many thanks to Phil and Gail for all their behind the scene work they did to get access to leases and for the beautiful tea towels Gail made for the shite stick award which now sits proudly amongst our treasures. We had beautiful weather although cold mornings. I did a total of 2 hrs detecting for the week lol. Decided to chill this year leaving the gold for others hehe. Also I like to thank Phil and Sandra for the great comp they organised identifying the target. Dig or leave? 12 burried targets including 2 gold nuggets 2 species 2 hotrocks and various bits of junk. You start to think that you have a good idea from the detectors responce but lesson is dig everything ( which I do) I didn't do too well only getting one correct so shite stick award for me lol. Phil ( flyrock) won with 4 correct. Well done mate. ( smarty pants)
The ones that couldn't make it were missed. Less people to win the shite stick. :-) but in sure next year will be bigger and better
.
On a serious note we all understand the unforgiving nature of what we do. The Aussie outback is a tought deceptive dangerous environmental and at some time shite happens to us all and who do you call?
The RFDS is the lifeline for us all and it would be great to be able to help this wonderful organisation so over the year we will be contacting management and looking at registering to collect funds to donate to the RFDS at the musters.
Once we are registered I will organise to canvas for sponcers for a raffle and give a ways at the musters.
This will be all voluntary and no pressure but just a small way DEWAG members can give back or pay it forward.
Any members looking to sponcer us can pm me.
Well I'm unpacking for the day then have cars to fix so a busy week ahead.
Keep safe
Cheers

Another fabulous muster done & dusted. A great time had catching up with friends of old & new. Huge Thank you to Karen & Marty for all the behind the scenes organising which takes a lot of time. Also to Phil & Sandra for the "to dig or not" buried treasure challenge. It was great fun & the message was clear at the end- Dig every target!! Many laughs were had & some brilliant ideas suggested for an even bigger & better one next year. Namely, raising funds for RFDS. Even if we only raise $50 its better than nothing. I will put my hand up to help with anything I can to get this happening & will get the embroidery machine smoking!
Already can't wait for next year!

We thoroughly enjoyed the 2019 DWAG Muster but finding gold was difficult. On one particular day our honoured and trusted leader guided us to a scrape and detect area on a nearby prospecting lease. Sandra and I arrived late in the morning because we were riding the quads and the temperature was more favourable to a late start.

To begin with we thought there were only a couple of others on the patch so we parked right on a pile of old cans (where we knew we wouldn’t detect) and started off up the slope with the detector. There were plenty of targets but all could be easily retrieved with the magnet.

Before long we spotted the big Can-Am quad approaching with a lady driver at the helm and our esteemed leader taking up the remaining seat. Karen loved the quad…… Martin suggested we move around the other side of the ridge where the ground was cleaner.

We’d seen enough rust by then so after loading our gear back on the quads we headed off to the other side. One look at the hill and we decided it was not for us. There were so many combing the patch that it looked like a swarm of ants so we continued on heading west.

The tracks were numerous with most ending at the top of a ridge or bottom of a gully. We detected a couple of areas but in general we enjoyed most of the day just sightseeing. The rock formations were eye catching and fun to climb about.



After multiple unsuccessful attempts at returning on a track I decided to take the across country approach but in doing so we soon arrived on the correct track and made our way back to the scrapes. By then everybody had obviously filled their pill bottles and left.

This was our chance to avoid embarrassment by grabbing a few nuggets on the way through. The first thing I noticed was the number of footprints. The ground looked like it had been overrun by a battalion of soldier crabs. Fortunately, they had left a few targets but most seemed to be those little shavings of steel left by the grader blade.

Surprisingly, these detectorists, some novices, were seemingly capable of detecting the difference between gold and less desirable targets. The footprints I followed seemed to walk right over a great number of junk targets and every here and there the ground disturbance indicated that they’d obviously dug a nugget.

You know how sometimes you get that feeling that you’re just not quite up to the task? Well, this was one of those moments. I had a strong feeling that most of these people had the ability to choose their targets wisely while I was left with the junk they could simply walk over.

That’s when I decided to put it to the test. Mrs M and I devised a plan to see just how good the rest of the team were and how far we had to go to get up to scratch.



The plan was to bury a good selection of junk that we’d collected along with a few good targets, you know, the golden ones. Our camp covered more than an acre of ground with most camped in a circular fashion around the perimeter. We turned the centre area into our playground.



A dozen targets were buried sufficiently spaced to allow several detectors to be operated at the same time. The targets were randomly placed and clearly marked by a circle of spray paint supplied by Flyrock. Each target was numbered by a fluoro pink tag also supplied by Flyrock.



The aim of this game was to correctly identify the target and indicate by a Y or N if you would choose to dig it. Most ticked Y to dig every target. I should have mentioned only honest answers would be accepted. Sorry I missed that one…. one person, Gail, answered Y or N as I suspect most should have. Unfortunately, like most she’d have missed the best of the gold.



It was good to see everybody involved. We got 12 entry forms returned and I must admit the results came back pleasing. These guys are sure to leave a bit of the gold for me……
Cathy – Just Scratching was the only one to correctly identify the big gold nugget. She also identified the 8g nugget. That surprised me because the 124g nugget was the only target to return a deep inverted signal on my GPX-4500. Perhaps her use of the Deaus treasure detector made the difference.

Frick1941, Flyrock and Captain 101 returned the best results with 4 targets correctly identified. Once again Gail reached into her bottomless bag of prizes to reward the winners.



All the numbers on this form were added after the event. They show the correct location of the target, the number of correct answers and the size of the gold targets. Those playing the game had no idea what size the gold nuggets and specimens were, but then we never do…...

It was a great idea guys and shows you you must dig all targets. I came last btw. Lol

It was definitely a learning curve for me......thankfully when we prospect we go on virgin ground where there's usually no rubbish at all, in which case I obviously dig every target!

The DWAG Muster this year was a chance to reacquaint ourselves with some and to meet new like-minded people. Everyone parked up in a large circle reminiscent of the covered wagon days. We met for a pow-wow each night around the campfire which seemed to get bigger every night. You could probably see it from space on one of those shooting stars which (apparently) kept on zipping by. Not that I saw one, mind you. There was evidence left behind of coals that had been put under chairs to warm the cockles of the bums on them.
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It was a great week with lots of eager chats and earnest laughs, lots of nominations for stupidity/weirdness and lots of “In my defence…” when nominated for the coveted golden spoon with the interesting name, lol.

The camp fires were mandatory as it was really cold early and late…. (we registered zero a few times) and for that reason we didn’t get going most mornings until the sun was well and truly up and had a bit of heat in it. Sort of.

The rides on the quads to various detecting places were just totally freezing despite how much sun there was and by the end of the week I was using a hot water bottle and Taz to keep the wind out of my bones. I left the bottle all day to keep warm on the black hot rocks (there were plenty of them!!) for the ride home which was even colder.




It didn’t stop my hands and feet from getting numb, though. I even used old cans to warm my hands before they could operate a detector!! Must be the first time I was glad to see the cans lying around. Even the flies sat on the edge of a warm tin mug to warm up…. or IN the tea if they were game... an plenty were. Hard to fathom we were eating ice creams around the camp fire, . Yummy, thanks to Gail.

Back to basics,gota love a hottie! And ice creams were a bonus for us too. Great that we could share!

My nug is slowly cleaning up in acid.

Noice Ty!

Hi All, what a pleasure to make so many new friends and also great to meet up with an old work-mate. Sorry it has taken so long to post but we had a few minor issues on our way north, nothing major just inconvenient stuff. Martin once again thanks for your patience and your generosity with your knowledge and a huge thanks to Karen for sharing you with us all. Thanks also to Phil and Gail for their generosity, humour and knowledge. Cathy and I are very keen to do our next MUSTER.

All our very best regards,
Steve and Cathy

Hi All, a big thank you to Martin, Karen for organising the Muster and Phil & Gail assisting Martin with the Muster.  We were sorry to have left half way thru, sadly, Bob isn't too well at the moment but we did enjoy the Muster and meeting old and new members.  No gold for us but in saying that, we really didn't put an effort into it as we found we couldn't walk the distance like we usually do. Old age.  ha.  Here are some pictures and movie of the Muster and area around Lake Mason Station.  Apologies to Sandra and Phil for leaving before the "night of the finds" it was a great idea. Sandra, thought you might like to see these bottles. By the way, Bob is selling his GPZ 7000 and will be posted tomorrow on the forum. Take care everybody and best wishes for future gold hunting. Hope to catch up on the road. 

Bob & Joan.

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Apologies I seem to have posted the same picture a couple of times.  Probably because Ty looked so good in the Hat and Spoon around his neck.  Cheers  Joan