Happy New year for 2025

[Blueadventures]

Happy New Year for 2025 to all members and enjoy plenty of nice safe flights.

[440032]

Thank you!

I was going for an early new year flight myself, but alas, low cloud blowing thru here.

[Red]

Health and happiness you lot

[spacesailor]

Wishing All ! .

A prosperous new year 2025 .

spaesailor

[facthunter]

No. Being poor is character building. Nev

[Moneybox]

On 01/01/2025 at 10:43 AM, facthunter said:

No. Being poor is character building. Nev

Yeah Nev, I know what you mean. I'm told there are annual fees to park a plane at the local airstrip so I'm looking for another option. 

 

 

 

My plane is still sitting in the back yard. It seems ever since covid struck everything takes twice as long to be supplied from just about anywhere.

 

[BrendAn]

1 hour ago, Moneybox said:

Yeah Nev, I know what you mean. I'm told there are annual fees to park a plane at the local airstrip so I'm looking for another option. 

 

 

 

My plane is still sitting in the back yard. It seems ever since covid struck everything takes twice as long to be supplied from just about anywhere.

 

Run the dirt you dig up and you might get lucky. I remember a mate saying his mum dug up a big nugget in her garden at sandstone.

[Moneybox]

39 minutes ago, BrendAn said:

Run the dirt you dig up and you might get lucky. I remember a mate saying his mum dug up a big nugget in her garden at sandstone.

 

Mrs M wants me to run the detector over it all. I'd be there for weeks but I might check out a few really good looking spots. Most of this ground has/had gold. It's a gold mining lease with another nine years to run.

 

 

I have no doubt the dryblower would pay well but I've sold that and I haven't got the wet plant up and running yet. There's always the risk of some idiot digging holes in the airstrip.

 

 

[BrendAn]

1 hour ago, Moneybox said:

 

Mrs M wants me to run the detector over it all. I'd be there for weeks but I might check out a few really good looking spots. Most of this ground has/had gold. It's a gold mining lease with another nine years to run.

 

 

I have no doubt the dryblower would pay well but I've sold that and I haven't got the wet plant up and running yet. There's always the risk of some idiot digging holes in the airstrip.

 

 

having a mining lease would be a dream for me.  maybe one day.  

do you know the story about reedys gold mine out of cue. some drillers i worked with had sample bags too heavy for to lift one nightshift , there was that much gold in them. the digger operator in the same pit was complaining the digger was slow. they had hit almost pure gold.  

Edited Friday at 12:51 PM by BrendAn

[onetrack]

When I was gold mining in the Kalgoorlie region in the early 1970's, I was in the Kalgoorlie State Battery one day, when a prospector wheeled in a wheelbarrow full of specimen stone, mostly quartz. There was highly visible gold in every piece of stone you looked at.

The stone was too rich to put through the stamps and over the table in the battery, so they just put it through the big Berdan pan, until it was well ground. I recall that he recovered something like 280 ozs of gold, from just that one wheelbarrow full!

 

I got 600 ozs of gold out my small open pit mine at Higginsville, but it took 8 years of Norseman State Battery crushing, and the hauling of 13,000 tonnes of ore 60 kms to Norseman for treatment, to get it!

The ore haulage was mostly done with a '68 Perkins-powered, tandem-drive "Butterbox" International ACCO, DF-1840 tipper! - an ex-council truck!

The East-West truckies used to curse me, holding them up on the hills, while the old 120HP Perkins ground her way over them loaded, in 2nd or 3rd gear!!

 

The Norseman State Battery manager, "Dick" Della (a top bloke) used to tell me stories of when he worked at the Lake Darlot State Battery as a young bloke - and there were 3 mines in the area that brought in their ore to be crushed, and Dick told me you could see visible gold in every shovelful he picked up. Those 3 mines regularly produced multiple ounces of gold, to the ton of ore.

In those early days, there was no hopper at the stamper, the ore was dropped onto a big flat plate alongside the stamps, and the employees picked up the ore with shovels, and shovelled it straight into the stamper boxes!

 

A Kalgoorlie woman, Moya Sharp, has an excellent website (link below) covering the early Goldfields towns and families histories.

 

Darlot - ghost town - Outback Family History

WWW.OUTBACKFAMILYHISTORYBLOG.COM

---

Mr L A Wells, a member of the ‘Elder Exploring Expedition of 1891’ discovered Lake Darlot on the 6th March 1892. The Lake was named after Leonard Hawthorn Darlot, pastoralist, one of the three sons of H...

 

[BrendAn]

4 minutes ago, onetrack said:

When I was gold mining in the Kalgoorlie region in the early 1970's, I was in the Kalgoorlie State Battery one day, when a prospector wheeled in a wheelbarrow full of specimen stone, mostly quartz. There was highly visible gold in every piece of stone you looked at.

The stone was too rich to put through the stamps and over the table in the battery, so they just put it through the big Berdan pan, until it was well ground. I recall that he recovered something like 280 ozs of gold, from just that one wheelbarrow full!

 

I got 600 ozs of gold out my small open pit mine at Higginsville, but it took 8 years of Norseman State Battery crushing, and the hauling of 13,000 tonnes of ore 60 kms to Norseman for treatment, to get it!

The ore haulage was mostly done with a '68 Perkins-powered, tandem-drive "Butterbox" International ACCO, DF-1840 tipper! - an ex-council truck!

The East-West truckies used to curse me, holding them up on the hills, while the old 120HP Perkins ground her way over them loaded, in 2nd or 3rd gear!!

 

The Norseman State Battery manager, "Dick" Della (a top bloke) used to tell me stories of when he worked at the Lake Darlot State Battery as a young bloke - and there were 3 mines in the area that brought in their ore to be crushed, and Dick told me you could see visible gold in every shovelful he picked up. Those 3 mines regularly produced multiple ounces of gold, to the ton of ore.

In those early days, there was no hopper at the stamper, the ore was dropped onto a big flat plate alongside the stamps, and the employees picked up the ore with shovels, and shovelled it straight into the stamper boxes!

 

A Kalgoorlie woman, Moya Sharp, has an excellent website (link below) covering the early Goldfields towns and families histories.

 

Darlot - ghost town - Outback Family History

WWW.OUTBACKFAMILYHISTORYBLOG.COM

---

Mr L A Wells, a member of the ‘Elder Exploring Expedition of 1891’ discovered Lake Darlot on the 6th March 1892. The Lake was named after Leonard Hawthorn Darlot, pastoralist, one of the three sons of H...

 

Would have been a real adventure for you back then. And a lot of hard work.  I drove a road train at chalice gold mine between Norseman and higginsville for a while.  60 km haul road. All onsite with a railway and highway crossing. That mine cost 55 million to set up and not long after it started they dug out one spot so rich that the mine was paid for in 2 days.   One thing that got me was how every site I ever worked on had been mined by the old timers 100 years before. 

[Moneybox]

I'm retired so gold prospecting is just a hobby. Mrs M would like me to be a bit more serious about it but there comes a time in life when you realise doing the things you love are much more important than the cost or payment in monetary value.

 

 

 

This is Mrs M with our haul from a few months out and about. Right now I'm more interested in getting the plane in the air but with gold at over $4000 an ounce it's tempting to put a bit more energy into it.

 

 

 

[Red]

7 hours ago, Moneybox said:

Yeah Nev, I know what you mean. I'm told there are annual fees to park a plane at the local airstrip so I'm looking for another option. 

 

 

 

Eh?, were you expecting it to be free?

[BrendAn]

4 hours ago, Red said:

Eh?, were you expecting it to be free?

It is at all 3 airports around here.

[spacesailor]

The only " gold " miner . To get rich was Murphy. 

The water supplier .

spacesailor

Edited Friday at 10:55 PM by spacesailor
Lost a letter

[Moneybox]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

The only " gold " miner . To get rich was Murphy. 

The water supplier .

spacesailor

 

Yeah "Murphy's Law" tends to kick in.

[facthunter]

Nah  Suppling the needs of miners is the surer way to find gold. Nev

[Moneybox]

11 hours ago, BrendAn said:

having a mining lease would be a dream for me.  maybe one day.  

do you know the story about reedys gold mine out of cue. some drillers i worked with had sample bags too heavy for to lift one nightshift , there was that much gold in them. the digger operator in the same pit was complaining the digger was slow. they had hit almost pure gold.  

 

I've got these couple of Pending leases at Reedy. Just fighting Native Title and Aboriginal Heritage at present.

 

 

But it was that airstrip that go me interested. Pop up there in the morning, dig a few nuggets and fly home (as long as I'm not over weight) 😉

[Red]

13 hours ago, BrendAn said:

It is at all 3 airports around here.

Airports or airfields?, and who owns and funds their upkeep? (Moneybox states airfields)

 

Interesting either way as there is no airfield/airport in my country that doesnt charge handsome fees to keep an aircraft on their premises.

Are you charged landing fees or some other movement charge at these 3 'airports'

 

[Moneybox]

12 minutes ago, Red said:

Airports or airfields?, and who owns and funds their upkeep? (Moneybox states airfields)

 

Interesting either way as there is no airfield/airport in my country that doesnt charge handsome fees to keep an aircraft on their premises.

Are you charged landing fees or some other movement charge at these 3 'airports'

 

I think quite a few are owned or operated by a flying club. Club fees and member labour most likely look after the facilities. Private airstrips are the owners responsibility. Our airstrip is controlled by the local shire.

 

 

We have 2000m of bitumen fully fenced with pilot activate lighting and a building with toilets and basic facilities. I'm not complaining about the fees but we'll see what happens if I apply to put up a hanger. I'm quite sure it'll be approved because the shire CEO said to let him know if I want to construct a hanger. The only private structure is that tiny grey square near the grey gravel patch at the top of the photo. It has two shipping containers securely anchored with huge concrete blocks and a roof spanning in between. 

[onetrack]

Moneybox, it's quite likely the Cue Shire Council will set an annual lease fee for the hangar site, plus you'll be charged annual rates as a "land owner" in the Shire. Then, to erect a hangar, you'll be up for application fees, building permit fees, building services levy, and building licence administration fee. They get you coming and going.

 

Below is the Council fees list, but the annual rates charges are not listed. There's a minimum annual rates charge for any property, usually $500-$600 on average. Then they'll want to know what other facilities you're going to install, and how they'll be serviced or operated.

 

I see where Cue Airport is also an ASIC-card controlled airport. That's another unnecessary hassle. 

 

https://www.cue.wa.gov.au/documents/39/2023-2024-fees-and-charges

 

EDIT - I just found the Cue airport information, as below. They also charge a fee of $9.70 per passenger, outgoing and incoming.

 

Airport » Shire of Cue

WWW.CUE.WA.GOV.AU

 

Edited Saturday at 11:07 AM by onetrack

[Moneybox]

You might think that with a couple hundred residents they might struggle for finance from rates. That's not the case. The whole area is under pastoralist lease, they pay rates, then we pay rates on any mining lease over 10ha, in the case of our mining lease that cuts through our back yard we pay residential rates on top of the mining lease rates. Services provided for a mining lease include unmaintained roads/tracks, no power, no water, no refuse collection or anything else.

Edited Saturday at 11:28 AM by Moneybox

[onetrack]

What did you think about the $328 fee for activating the landing lights!! Gee, have they got to crank up a 250Kva Cat genset to operate the lights??

[Moneybox]

18 minutes ago, onetrack said:

What did you think about the $328 fee for activating the landing lights!! Gee, have they got to crank up a 250Kva Cat genset to operate the lights??

 

Yes there is a decent sized genset there but I doubt it's quite that big 😁

[facthunter]

IF you need them something is wrong with your planning unless you  did it deliberately and then you could expect to pay for the privilege of it working. It would have to be checked regularly by someone qualified and guaranteed to do it.  It would have to be 100% reliable. Maybe even have a backup.   Nev