Erik Oostra

So far this Easter holiday my ring recovery service is doing well.. As I mentioned before I don't charge anything for my efforts and people pay what they think its worth.. Sometimes people contact me on my Facebook page or otherwise they see their items there.. I was rewarded $100 for the phone, $50 for the car key and $50 for the ring with Roman numbers.. Whilst I was hunting for people's stuff I also found a few other bits of jewellery and $32 in coins.. I love school holidays!

Those trees don't show up on old photos, they're far younger than the coins.. Old photos of this part of the island show a forest along this bay right up to the beach, but there may have been a small clearing here a hundred years ago.. The landscape is very different now and I'm forever having to imagine where people would swim/picnic in the olden days..

Thanks Doc, my radar is on overdrive most times but I still end up spending too much time hunting popular spots.. A very bad habit that I aim to change.. A change of habit = a change of luck..

Looks like my luck has changed from finding nothing worthwhile for weeks to finding a little silver mine.. As part of a new quest to hunt places which I normally drive past on my way to popular beaches, I decided to pull over at two trees along the beach.. This is not a touristy spot and I thought my chances were slim.. To my surprise this spot yielded ten pieces of silver (dated from 1904 to 1916) and two silver rings (one is 975, the other says 'sterling silver').. Also two bullets.. It's always great to hunt spots where no detectorist has been before.. I've found a few spots like this and I'm sure there's plenty more.. It doesn't really matter if no one goes there today, a hundred years ago (or more) it could have been a popular hangout..

What detectors will you be comparing them to?

Before you buy it Louisden, check out the BastardXWave.. This detector is the most extreme deepest..

Crikey!.. He managed to save them all.. VIDEO -- https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-65095295

Last week I did find a nice looking shell.. While I didn't find it with a metal detector, I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't been metal detecting.. So I guess it sort of counts as a find..

Apart from a few coins, it's been a few weeks since I've found anything worth writing home about.. Not finding anything is not necessarily a bad thing and it hasn't discouraged me from spending a few hours each morning hunting the island's bays.. Getting out and about early to go metal detecting has become such a big part of my life I often wonder what I'd do without it.. Although some people might think of this as a rather boring routine (especially when I'm not finding anything), the adventures that come along when metal detecting keep the early morning hunts from getting dull.. This morning's hunt is a good example.. I was chasing out the tide at my home bay when just outside the beam of my headlight I spotted a dark shape launch itself into the waves.. It turned out to be a huge black dog trying to grab a turtle so it could drag it to the beach.. I waded in waist deep with my little shovel and an immense land and sea battle got underway.. It wasn't a tame dog, this thing was bloody ferocious.. In between dodging my shovel blows it kept trying to grab the turtle's flippers, it wasn't about to give up its prey.. Eventually a large wave dumped the turtle on the beach and I was able to get between it and the dog.. Now it was a standoff.. We looked at each other trying to figure out what the other's next plan of attack would be.. I acted first and rushed the dog waving my shovel and doing my best impression of a Zulu warrior.. To my great relief the dog turned tail and retreated back outside the light of my headlight.. I swam the turtled back out beyond the surf, the poor thing was too exhausted to try and bite me.. Even when weeks go by without finding anything, there's always something happening that makes metal detecting worthwhile.. I might spot a koala, echidna or a possum.. A storm or a high tide might expose a whole new area to explore.. And the sunrises never get old, each one heralds the day in its own unique way.. This is besides the feeling of contentment that metal detecting brings, whether underwater or on land.. I'm not talking about some overwhelming joy or anything spiritual, just a feeling that everything's all right in my little world.. This feeling trumps any disappointment.. Instead it makes me believe that my luck is about to change, that my next great find is only a coil sweep away..

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The low tide finds: an ugly looking ring and a no-brand wonder.. Weirdly, there was also a little patch of seven Ozzy 1 cents.. And a 'ram's head' shilling amongst the washed out tree roots at Geoffrey Bay.. I was hoping for a few older coins but I've only hunted around the Silver Mine tree roots.. There's a whole stretch of this bay which has been hit even harder by the high tides.. I'll hunt Geoffrey Bay first at tomorrow morning's low tide (around 3:15 am), then I'll go back to another bay on this side of the island..

Just got back to the island and it looks like none of you got there before me.. Not even Geoff, who's kindly given me permission to hunt his beach until he gets back (I'm just a security guard/care taker).. Phrunt also didn't show up, but no doubt he'll make his way over to the island again to hoover up all the gold and old coins there's left to find (if Geoff will let him).. But there was one thing that got there before anyone else, another monster tide! 12cm higher than the last one, which has made a huge difference with even more sand getting washed away around the Silver Mine.. People living along Geoffrey Bay have never seen a tide come up this high.. Last month's high tides together with these ones have stripped tonnes of sand from all south-east facing bays.. Whilst at Geoffrey Bay this is a good thing, it also means that good targets at other bays get washed further out to sea where they're buried deep.. Tomorrow morning there's a very low tide at around 2:30 am, I'll go and have a look at two south-east facing bays to see if I can find anything further out.. I know that people living at Geoffrey Bay don't share my point of view regarding the benefits of beach erosion.. And I do feel bad getting excited about their misfortune, including the prospect of future high tides reaching their door steps.. This last one levelled out about 20 metres away..

Another high-tide along Geoffrey Bay, this one reaching up as high as a spot I've called the Silver mine.. I've found many old silver coins here dating back to the mid-1800s from the time the island was first settled.. I couldn't have wished for a better spot to get washed out.. Unfortunately, I can't have a looksee today as I have to go to the mainland, but tomorrow morning I'll hunt this stretch of the bay right down to the low-tide mark..

I hope this message from Minelab isn't true.. Sounds like they've just glued the coil ears back on and will charge me for the glue.. 😄

Wireless or not wireless? This is what ChatGPT has to say..

That's also what I had in mind when I talked about learning the nuances of the Nox 800.. The narrow mid-range scale on its target ID is what my brain has slowly become adjusted to.. Besides, when I really need an expanded target ID to work out the nitty gritty of whether to dig or not, I can always grab the Deus II (or just dig).. Part of adjusting my brain to the nuances of my Nox 800 has involved less reliance on the speakers.. It's getting harder to hear them so I find myself using headphones with a WM08 more often, this has opened a whole new world as far as tonal nuances are concerned.. I thought I had them pretty well covered with just the speakers and hearing aids, but more fool me.. I could never really hear the speakers on the Deus II but that problem has been solved with an adaptor cable and an old pair of RPG headphones with adjustable volume knobs on each side (they're mainly set on loud).. Has anyone tried the WM08 with the Nox 900?

It surprised me too, the sand looks so white.. but in some places where creeks run into bays there's a thick layer of black sand under the white crushed coral sand..

Still a bit unsure to be honest Chase.. I'm so used to the nuances of my Nox 800 that I'm hesitating like mad about upgrading.. I know the Nox 900 has features which would be handy for water or night hunting (like the vibrating handle and light), but in terms of performance I think the Nox 900 won't bring much more to the table.. Besides, I'm slowly learning that when the Nox 800 struggles at some spots, the mighty Deus II picks up the slack.. 🙂

In the edited video I didn't get a shot of the bar graph after I did a ground balance (I'd cut it after the cool palm tree shot), so I took a screengrab from the uncut version.. The ground mineralization (phase measured) meter on the right stayed on 87 on both wet and dry sand, whilst the bar graph remained blank.. Sorry, I should've made that clearer..

Just checked, it stays the same in both dry and wet sand at 87..

A while ago Phrunt suggested I run a magnetic over my beach to see how much black sand there was.. I was trying my luck at magnet fishing this morning but it turns out a magnet with a pulling force of 500 kgs is useless for the job.. But dragging the thing a few metres over dry sand was an eye opener.. 😮

I hope you're wrong Chase.. 🙂 I assumed they'd also strengthen the coil ears on the new 15x12'' coils.. If any coil needs its ears strengthened, it's that one..

Early November last year the ears on my 15x12'' Equinox coil finally broke off.. Seeing all the complaints about broken coil ears, I was surprised they lasted 3 years.. This is my main coil so I send an email to Gold Diggers (the dealer) explaining what had happened and if they could find a copy of the invoice as I'd lost mine.. All I had was a shipping order with the invoice date.. They responded a day later and said they'd sold the shop to Gold Rat Highbankers, so I send them an email with my tales of woe.. Dustin responded straight away and told me how to go about replacing it directly through Minelab.. He also offered to ship it for me and fill out a warranty repair request on my behalf.. I told him I'd try the Minelab direct route first and send them an email saying I didn't have an invoice, but instead I'd attached a copy of the shipping order and a picture of the broken coil ears.. A week went by before I got a response.. Obviously they hadn't read my email because they wanted to see an invoice.. Once more I explained that I didn't have an invoice but I did have a shipping order showing who I'd bought the coil from and the date it was invoiced (there were 3 weeks of warranty left). A week later I got a response from Minelab saying they now needed the coil serial number.. I explained to them that the little white sticker with the serial number had washed off years ago in the sea somewhere.. This time they responded within a few days telling me not to worry because my invoice should have the number on it.. Now it wasn't that I was talking to a different person with each email, it was same dude the whole time.. I think this shows the difference between small companies and global corporations, the Minelab dude is probably run off his feet dealing with hundreds of cranky customers.. So a few slip between the cracks when responding to warranty claims.. Anyway, I explained for the third time that I didn't have an invoice (not for a lack of trying to get a hold of one) but I did have a shipping order with the invoice date, and that the serial number had been claimed by the sea.. I also told him that I'd explained all this before and I'd run out of ways to explain it any different.. A few days later the Minelab dude contacted me again.. He said he'd talked it over with his manager and even though I didn't have an invoice or serial number, they'd decided to replace the coil.. The reason they decided to go ahead? You guessed it, they replaced the coil "due to the nature of the fault".. I guess Minelab could've given me a further run around or told me they wouldn't replace it without an invoice or serial number, but this is a way of taking ownership of a design fault (sort of).. So, this morning I've send the old coil to the Minelab service centre with a little note asking if they could possibly replace it with a 15x12'' coil for an Equinox 700 or 900 because they've got stronger coil ears.. I thought I might as well ask.. 'No' I've got, 'yes' I can get.. 😁

A nosey Karen in the form of a young council worker once told me off for detecting on a public beach.. At least I think that's what he was trying to tell me as I'm hard of hearing and couldn't understand what he was going on about.. But his facial expressions told me he wasn't happy.. Frustrated that he wasn't getting anywhere with me, he stormed off to get reinforcements.. He came back with an older council worker who's based on the island and had seen me detect on beaches before.. He must have calmed the young guy down a bit and just asked me if I'd found anything.. I told him no luck yet which the young guy had a good laugh at.. Then the old guy starts telling the young guy about some old silver coins I'd found there.. It turns out it was the young guys first week on the job and the power of playing God had gotten to him.. All ended well and every now and then he'll ask if I've found anything.. I always tell him the same 'nah, nothing this morning mate'..