Relic hunting in the South West

Relic Hunting

In general terms relic hunting is the process of unearthing items from old or disused sites. Some relics are extremely valuable either due to the material they are made of (gold, silver, jewelery) or because they are an antique item with collector value. Some relics will be worthless in terms of monetary value, but can be meaningful for the person who finds them. More than one mans trash has become another mans trinket.


Recently I have been working with an older gentleman on a project relating to the early  settlement  of the south west corner of Western Australia. A lot of the earlier settlements were based around the logging and timber industry. This industry dried up many years ago, but anyone wandering through the bush today will come across numerous old tracks, roads, bridges and railways built specifically for the timber industry. Using a variety of records I was able to use the Google Earth program to outline many potential relic hunting sites. 


The results of sifting through over 900 pages of data to locate historical sites in the south west.

My first trip out was on Wednesday this last week (11/9/13) and I must say I was surprised at the results. I decided to head into an area I was fairly familiar with. The area was previously a site for logging and some mining had been done in the area. I picked my sites and headed off with my metal detector in hand. This was the result;


My route traveled on my first relic hunt in the south western corner.

My Garmin GPS mapped the route as shown in the above image. After battling my way into the bush and finding the right bush track, I parked my car in a nice central location to the sites I had chosen. The first was the Happy Valley Timber settlement. I dont know much about this place, or how accurate the co-ordinates were but my finds disappointed me. When I reached the designated area their was an obvious clearing, but for the life of me i struggled to locate anything that might indicate that the area was once a busy timber camp. On my way to the location I came across a length of very thick, rusty chain. That aside, the area was rather disappointing. 



The next area I visited was the corresponding railway siding for the timber settlement. Again, I could not vouch for the accuracy of the co-ordinates supplied and I ended up on a hillside amongst a pile of rocks. A quick scan with the detector showed that there was nothing in the area so I had a quick scout around to see if I was missing something. Sure enough, at the base of the hill was a clearing that didnt quite look natural. Within moments of grabbing my detector I was getting a range of good signals from the earth in the area. These are just some of the pieces I came across;

Four 22. caliber  rifle shells, six copper/brass shotgun shells (minus the plastic casing) and a rusted cog that had several small attached parts.

Behold, the dirt was filled with all kinds of items! A 10 minute forage left me with this handful of goodies that were pulled from the same shallow hole. Pleased with my results here, i thought I best keep moving on to the last site I had scoped out before there weather came in (it was already quite wet and my rain cover on the detector was at its limit). After the success of the 2nd site the third was a disappointment. Unlike the previous two site it was obvious that a siding had been in operation here, but all that I could find with the detector were large railway pegs and rusted nuts and bolts. 



I concluded my activities and made a dash for the car. After several hundred meters I encountered a seasonal stream which I had some difficulty jumping with my full bag of tools. Luck was on my side and I landed my leap without too much difficulty and also managed to make it over the next creek I encountered. 20 minutes later I was back at the car and making my way on home.