I recently came across some info on a long abandoned gold mining camp, or “village” as it was listed. It was hidden away behind some private property, and there was almost no reference to it in modern publications and maps that I looked at.
It was a long hike in on foot and when I first went to investigate it, without a detector, I found what I counted to be at least the remains of 15 or so miners huts. It didnt look like it had been detected before as there were many old bottles and stoneware items laying on the surface, so I was excited to race home and kit up for the exploration.
After an hour or so detecting I was surprised at how little amount of targets were to be found, even though it had not been detected. Some huts must have been occupied until at least 1905, but most items that I could date where from the 1850’s-60’s as it was originally a gold rush settlement.
There’s about 10kg worth of metal objects collected, but no gold items, and very little silver too!! Very surprising finds indeed, not what I expected at all.
The nicer objects and the 50 odd coins are shown from the village. It must have been very poor and/or the settlers had and lost very little in their stay there.