There seems to be a bit of a trend for signs on the path here and we spotted this gem directly outside an insurance brokers office.
Cool place and some good food too, I managed to redeem myself with Mr Fogg by taking us to Bullions for some surprisingly gastronomic food.
We visited the local gold mine today. In its prime Thames was bigger than Auckland and was one of the richest areas for gold mined in quartz seams around the area. We went around the gold mine buildings (dull wrecks with nothing to see), had a tour underground which was actually pretty cool ( and wet, and damp and our tour guide looks to have brought his new girlfriend along to impress her, shame she just had flip flops on and got wet sandy feet) and then we got to pan for gold.
Now I thought I would enjoy gold panning. It sort of works like this. Dunk metal plate groove side down into bed of sand. Scoop some from bottom into your plate, swill with muddy water, throw away big stones, keep swilling and eventually find teeny teeny shiny bits of black in bottom and you’ve got gold.
In reality – swill sand around metal plate, attempt to rinse and end up losing half of said sand. Get splashed by Mr Fogg as he rinses too. Listen to other “expert” tourist tell us all how to do it properly. Listen more to “expert” tourist telling us all what other bits of rock and stone are “ooh that’s a garnet, and that’s a blah blah stone, oh that’s an opal yackety yack”. Swill more muddy water into plate, find lots of sand, get fed up, drop sand and plate in the dirty horse trough full of water and wait to be congratulated by Mr Fogg for finding something interesting to do, hold breath, hold breath, hold breath, oh well. Go back to car and find something more interesting like counting clouds!
[Posted from Mrs Foggs super cool iphone]