Watch your eyes!

I guess we have all experienced those times when, for whatever reason, the campfire just seems to be like an exploding ammunition dump with loud bangs and unidentified missiles whizzing past our heads. On a recent trip my mate copped a hot flying ember on the top of his eyelid. The ember was slightly embedded and had to be flicked off . It left a nasty burn mark, but half an inch lower and he could have been in some trouble.

A couple of days later at dusk, I was dragging in some wood for the fire. I bent down to pick up a log, but in the fading light did not see a thin branch that stabbed me in the forehead just above the eye. . Again, had it been about an inch lower and I would been in some serious trouble. It is for incidents like this that I wear sunnies while detecting. Many times while poking around under the mulgas, a stick has jabbed into my sunglasses.

As result of these near misses, I will now include a pair of clear safety glasses in my kit. Most times they won’t be needed, but when the bombs start going off, I will be prepared. I know that I will look like a Dick and almost certainly cop a serve, but eyesight is just too important to take chances with.

Col

Yeah Col we had a fire one night doin the snap crackle pop thing and on closer inspection it was the quartz that we had under it that was popping off in sharp shards, at first i thought it might a been the latterite pebbles but in this case the quartz.


Pete

Warriedar is bloody bad for that too Col the solid coffee rock underneath the fire explodes showering embers and red hot rock everywhere-even had holes burnt through the tarp of my colorado parked about 10 meters away-Dragon

Missiles from the fire I call "spitrocks" and they are usually quartz fragments from exploding rocks, and I have had them stuck to my face and arms, they are very hot and stick to the skin, strangely enough I tend to notice then more when I don't have any port to drink

Apart from that, sticks and branches can do some real damage also, take care when breaking fire wood and walking under branches, mulga wood is hard and will go in deep, one time I ended up with a splinter in the back of my neck while detecting under a tree and stepping back into the branch.

au-fever