Back Creek Field Trip, 24 April 2021

[miguel]

Hi everyone,

Our Next field trip will be to Ron Gregory’s lease in Back Creek, on Saturday the 24th of April 2021. We will have a short General Meeting at 9:00, followed by a day of fossicking. The trip is free for members, and if you’re interested in joining up, you can do so on the day.

There will be a dawn service to mark ANZAC day on the Sunday, conducted by Ron. Please read up on the trip rules and timing, as these have changed compared to normal.

We will be having a raffle and activities similar to October of last year. We will have buckets of wash guaranteed to have gold. Due to some objections from MRT, wash will be made up with gold that the association has purchased, so there will be a minimum known amount in each measure of dirt.

Back Creek contains shallow historical workings and is a good location for detecting small nuggets, and a few nuggets and specimens have been found in recent times, up to close to an ounce. PMAT has been there a few times, and every time people have detected gold. There is also a large pond for panning, or in case you want to bring your highbanker.

The main meeting place will be the historic shacks on Ringswandls Road (off Back Creek Rd).

The area has a lot of historical mining works, including open-cuts, pits, trenches and shafts. If you’ll be joining us. Please be aware of where you step and understand that you enter at your own risk.

GETTING THERE

Most of you probably know how to get to the lease. For those of you who don’t, the lease is on Back Creek Road, which starts behind the Pipers River shop (on Bridport Road). We will meet at the area of 1930s shacks on Ringsgwandls Rd .

In the map above, this is where the road crosses a creek marked ‘Spring Creek’, just to the NW of a pond.

Camping

Ron has invited members who want to to camp at the lease on Friday and Saturday nights. A couple of things to keep in mind:

• No arrivals before 1:00 pm on Friday unless by prior arrangement with Ron
• No-one to remain on site past 5:00 pm on Sunday unless by prior arrangement with Ron
• There is no potable water on site, so please bring your own
• There is now a flushing toilet and water for washing (non-potable)

Rules

As we’ll be working inside a current mining lease, there are some conditions to attending, please read these carefully:

• Please RSVP for this trip on info@pmat.org.au by Wednesday 21st of April
• All attendees will need to fill in a sign-in sheet on arrival, and sign out at the end of the trip.
• All attendees will have to complete an indemnity form on arrival, acknowledging the risks of accessing an area of current and historical mining works, and absolving the leaseholders of liability
• All gold found is to be reported to Ron, as royalties have to be paid. Pieces under 5 g are yours to keep, but any pieces over 5 g will involve negotiating the portion of their weight over 5 g (whether by selling them to Ron or paying a proportion of the weight over 5 g to keep them). Ron will explain the detail on the day.
• The area contains abundant mining heritage. Please be respectful of this and of any lease property.
• Any areas of current workings are off-limits. There will be some areas taped off. Please respect these when on site.

See you all there!!!

[miguel]

If you have any topics that you’d like to talk about on the day, this is a good place to write yourself a reminder.

• We should probably have a quick talk about the pros and cons of consolidating our web presence here.

[ajhoman71]

Hi all
Well we are nearly there for back ck an the weathers not to bad looking we have all ways had good luck with theweather there, same as always we will have hats .stubbie holders. an stickers for sale we will have plenty of pay dirt bags to buy aswell an the famous raffle again .,we gunna have two marquee set up one for merchandise raffle etc the other will be for membership an rons public liability sign in sign out this HAS TO BE DONE ,we have good toilets there .an gunna put a sink an tap there aswell,DO NOT DRINK THE WATER PLEASE,DO NOT DRINK THE WATER ,if u have a big van rig etc just catch up with ron before parking ,theres plenty of wood laying about an i think its safe enough for fires ,.in general the club is going well finacially we doing good we got a good committee an a good bunch of members , i think pmat has made some positive changes to the prospecting community in tassie ,if you have any ideas issues etc yell out one last thing UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES GO NEAR THE MACHINERY OR THAT AREA WERE THERE IS ACTIVITY across the dam ,thats about it any issues just ask on the forum or ring me ron or miguel cheers andrew 0400623451 ps phone reception is just an we have no card facility’s so cash only pls

[Stozki]

Awesome thanks for that again, what are the prices again pls as an update.

[Nigel]

You have done,well looking forward to it.
Good of Ron to let the club down there and well done Ron for dawn service, respectfull.

[Slydog83]

Cant wait keen as thanks Ron bloody legend

[karl]

Hi ajhoman71, That’s informative. I’m going to show you where the Enter key is on you keyboard/keypad. It breaks it up into a few paragraphs and looks better. Don’t blame me one of my parents was a school teacher

I hope the weather is going to be good but probably a cold night or two. Ron won’t miss any precious metal when I’m there because I never find any

[pmatadmin]

Hi everyone,

There’s been an incident with a leaseholder neighbouring Ron’s. In short, some people who said they were PMAT members were found poaching in one of the other leases, including taking material from his stockpiles, and the leaseholder is very upset about it.

We’ve always made it VERY CLEAR that our invite to Back Creek is for the field trip date ONLY, and only to Ron’s part of his lease, so if it has really been some of our members, we bloody well ought to know better.

If you get caught poaching or otherwise doing the right thing, don’t bring the club into it, this is not what we stand for and you’re on your own. We’ll be talking about this at the meeting, but needless to say, bringing the club into disrepute like this is not something we can take lightly.

We put a lot of effort into encouraging our members to do the right thing, and a lot of work into finding places for field trips. Being invited to places like Ron’s lease is a privilege, not a right. The sort of reputation that this incident gives us makes it very hard to get permission to go to the sort of places we’d like to be going to. We had a similar issue in the past when permission was revoked for us to go to Bell Creek a while ago after rumours of poaching in the lease there.

See you all on the weekend!

[ajhoman71]

Well said miguel,it can stuff it up for everyone

[ajhoman71]

Update on prices at bk creek ,hats$25 ,stubby holders $10,stickers $5 , family membership $35 , single membership $20,raffle 1 ticket $5 or three for $10 theres gunna be a few different prizes there an its a bit of good fun, pay dirt bags $25 theres a guaranteed . 2 of a gram in them with a few nice suprises in them if your lucky,…again pls remember no card facilities so cash only pls …,we are gunna hopefully set up a test patch for detectors to test depth an signal strength which is quiet interesting to test your detector,the weather looking good so far ,. C you all there howd i go karl

[PeterR]

Many, many thanks to everyone involved in creating a fantastic first prospecting experience for Meg and myself. You’re a great bunch of people!

We learned heaps, came home exhausted, but would do it again in a heartbeat.

Special thanks to Ron, for allowing it to happen; to Miguel for making us feel comfortable enough, as complete novices, to actually attend; and to Simon and Andrew for all their efforts at the upper cut.

[stiboyh]

First bag of wash down came in at .3

had a really good weekend thank you to Ron and pmat committee for all you do for the club and the hobby and to everyone who attended and make it what it is…

[Nigel]

All that small stuff was in the dirt we used I think, can’t remember Andrew weighing out that small flecks

[Drystone]

It was a great weekend, good to chance to catch up with old and new faces.
No big nuggets or gold coins this time, but still enough to keep most people happy!
Thanks again to Ron and committee for their efforts, including dawn service on ANZAC day

[Wizard_Smith]

Thanks for having everyone on the lease Ron and everyone who put the trip together. It was great to meet everyone, had an absolute ball.

[dhawley]

Thanks again to PMAT and RGProspecting for another fantastic weekend. Good to see a few people find their first gold and the dawn service was great.

[lyn8curt]

Thanks goes to Ron and Emma again for a very enjoyable weekend . It was great to see all the gold being found and the nights around the fire make you realize what city/town life has lost . No gold coins for me this time but sorting out my junk finds when i got home i realized a lump of lead was actually sheet lead . With visions of several hidden Sovereigns i unfolded it to find a very fine example of an unfired .577 Snider projectile . I guess it was destined for the melting pot when lost .

[ajhoman71]

[ajhoman71]

[karl]

Hi ajhoman, I hope you got some metal as well? I could see you working pretty hard on Saturday. Don’t let me scare you from adding text to these images