The night earlier, I had read that the areas south of Sailor's falls - which I guess is where we had been concentrating our hunting, had been flogged to death. Someone on a forum said they and others had had better luck trying the areas on the side of Basalt road which runs up to Hepburn Springs.

I headed there as a solo mission - found an interesting area of new pine plantations not far from the turnoff onto Basalt road - and had a hunt.  Probably the highest iron levels I have ever encounted.  Beautiful views.  But still no gold.  The area looked like it had been turned over a fair bit but some of the rock formations were spectacular and I was sure were going to yield something - but not to be.

I tried some forest next to it and came up with only shotgun pellets and eventually called it a day by driving to Hepburn Springs for a Sarsparilla and then heading back to base.

And below is the total of mine and Tom's findings - top left is the lock cover which I think takes the cake as the most interesting find of all.  The rocks are a mixture of hot and cold which I have taken to get a better understanding of which should help future prospects.