The Metal Detector
By John Wade
Terry McLeod from Wyndham was always a good source of local information and he liked to let you know he was ‘the font of all knowledge’ regarding everyone, anything and everything happening in the town and district.
He was a friendly type of fellow: we met in Wyndham in 1988 soon after I moved to Darwin. My new job with BP in November 1987 was ‘Manager, Northern Territory’ and the management of the BP offices in Perth and Brisbane agreed in 1988 that, due to the vast distance from Perth, it would be more cost effective to administer the East Kimberleys from Darwin.
Kununurra was only about 55 minutes flying time from Darwin. Rather than delegate this new responsibility to either of the Northern Territory area managers, David Llewelyn or Geoff Kingston, I decided to take on the additional responsibility as ‘Area Manager, East Kimberleys’ myself. I enjoyed getting to know this most special area of Australia, its scenery and, most importantly, its people.
Wyndham was once a busy meat export centre and the shell of the abattoir was still there, but a lot of equipment had been sold or taken away. The town was very quiet but still had a sense of history about it.
The surrounding country is visually stunning with impressive ranges, such as Cockburn Range, which for me generated an awe-inspired feeling of a vast and ancient landscape. I learnt to understand how Aboriginal people revered the landscape.
Terry McLeod was keen on the prospects of the potential diamond exploration industry – then at its very early stage of exploration – and what financial benefits this activity could bring to the town. Fitzroy Diamond Corporation, of which I was company secretary and a director, had not yet been granted the Exploration Licence in Cambridge Gulf, adjacent to Abrolhos Island – application pending.
Prior to my arrival in the area, Terry had met Ken Rehder and the ‘Grey Ghost’, Graham Beith, of Pacific Arc Exploration, and organised a barge for them to venture out into Josephine Bonaparte Gulf to search for diamonds.
Terry introduced me to Trevor Nelson, who was an innovative and clever fellow and a very able operator and improviser of mining and earth-moving machinery. He was also a very sound thinker. We will return to Trevor later in the story.
A couple of years later, I took two weeks’ annual leave from BP and set off for Montejinnie Station, 600km southwest of Darwin, on the minerals exploration program I’d set up with Charles Phipps. I’d borrowed Terry’s metal detector and we’d made a deal that I would share 10 percent of anything I found of value with him, being the owner of the equipment.
I asked him if he’d ever found anything valuable with it.
“I’m not sure,” he replied slowly. He then told me that he’d once taken it out to an abandoned Chinese market garden a few miles out of Wyndham. In the background, the majestic Cockburn Range escarpment dominates the landscape with its ageless façade. The Chinese gardener built up a small business – but had been speared by members of the local Aboriginal tribe after he had enticed one of the women to his camp.
I asked Terry if he found anything interesting there and he ventured ‘no’ but his response was guarded and when I pressed him further he admitted he was ‘a bit mystified’ about his only discovery.
The Chinese gardener had stacked up the rocks he’d collected from the area of fertile soil he’d chosen for his garden into five rock cairns scattered around the perimeter. Terry told me he had put the metal detector over one pile of rocks and got a strong signal.
He moved some of the rocks by hand and found a jam tin further down.
“Terry, what was in the tin?” I asked. “Only some lead – it was about one quarter full.”
He said he had found one tin in each rock pile, all with lead in them. “What did you do with them?” I quickly asked.
“Mate, it was only lead, so I put the tins back and replaced the rocks over them.”
Lying in my swag at ‘Montejinnie’ one night, under full night-time exposure to the vast canopy of stars and the magnificence and awesome power of the universe, the meaning of the tins of lead finally flashed into my comprehension. My ‘light bulb moment’ led me to the only rational conclusion possible:
The wily old Chinaman had put his gold sovereigns and half sovereigns in each tin then melted enough lead to cover the coins. If anyone ever found the tins, there was nothing of value to be seen and certainly no one would be able to see the colour of his gold. After all that time, his strategy had been smart: it certainly fooled Terry! I was anxious to get back to Wyndham to put my theory to the test.
Meanwhile, down at Montejinnie, Charles Phipps and I were not in obvious gold-bearing country but you cannot really tell much about the creeks which could be carrying alluvial gold and small nuggets, like Halls Creek over the border in Western Australia.
One afternoon, I turned on the metal detector and tuned it, then set out up the big, dry, sandy creek where we had camped for lunch. I walked a long way from the creek crossing without getting any sort of a signal. Still, I kept going and suddenly a strong signal gave me a start. Backwards and forwards, I moved the detector in diminishing arcs and bent down to look at the find. Would you believe it? I had found a 1½ inch nail, way out in the middle of Australia! I had the sudden notion of someone flying over the outback throwing out nails from an aircraft to cause much excitement and heart palpitations for enthusiastic prospectors like me!
Every day, while we were at Montejinnie, I could not get Terry’s story about the market garden out of my mind. When I returned to Wyndham I handed back the metal detector and told Terry about the nail, so his 10 percent share did not really require any serious calculation. We both had a laugh about that.
Casually I said, “Let’s go out early tomorrow morning and have another look at the Chinaman’s piles of rocks and bring back the tins with the lead in them.”
I fully expected we could melt the lead, pour it off and then count the spoils and divvy them up, this time me taking the 10 percent. I could visualise the gleam of gold as we poured off the lead to reveal the sovereigns. My vision about the cache of sovereigns excited Terry too.
Early next morning at the abandoned garden, we could not find one tin in any of the piles when we removed the rocks. Terry couldn’t understand it.
“For goodness sake Terry, you didn’t tell anyone did you?” I asked.
He scratched his head and looked pretty sheepish or stupid, it did not matter which.
“Only Trevor Nelson,” he replied.
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