New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

I agree, i alway read your posts mate, but im sure part two and three will be just as interesting!

Thanks Lammerlaw, great reading about your adventures, well done Nuggy

11,434 views and a photoshop view of a stuck landrover. Even I can see the ground is flat and the camera is being held on an angle.

Spring is coming and the whitebait will be running soon, if it ever stops raining. Just write the book.

I also think ya should write a book. I' reckon she'd be a beaut yarn! Entitled "Lammer's Law"

Just record it and make ya lad type it out haha

Keep the stories coming on here too please :) Reminds me of hanging on my uncles farm as a lad!

Dan

Nuggy - I have just arrived home from Waimate and it is truly gratifying to see others contribute so maybe a little longer. As for Landrovers - if someone began a thread about them or a general thread of True tales in the outback I would certainly contribute - I will say though that not all of my Landrover tales are high country ones - I twice tried to achieve wheelspins on tarseal with a couple of my Landrovers and on both occasions that Landrover stayed where it was because the axle snapped!
I had three major accidents in the very first year I ever owned a Landrover - I suppose the most stupid one of the lot was knowing that there were X number of power poles between one intersection and another and because the windscreen was steamed up on a cold day I simply looked out the drivers side window, counted the number of power poles then spun the steering wheel to go around a corner...the result is not a Gold mining yarn so will remain untold - I think that might have been the accident that lost me my licence...but then again another accident might have been the one that cost my licence
Ever seen your own wheel complete with axle pass you on the main road? - had that happen at Waikouaiti but thats also another story as are the stories of my spare wheel coming off the bonnet and chasing me down the road - three times! On one occasion it hit the curb, shot over someones front fence, mowed a row of rose bushes down then went around into their back yard and came to rest in their potato patch. i managed to retreive it and head west before they woke up to the carnage and I bet for the remainder of their lives wondered how in Hades a single large wheel left one wheel print down the row of roses and out into their back garden!
The bonnet came off once to - complete with spare wheel!
Great things Landrovers! - I still have the one that feature in the story of this claim.

Edited by user Monday, 10 September 2012 10:23:34 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Lammerlaw, No, Except for when the whole back diff came adrift, I never had a wheel come off my Landrover - maybe I wasn't operating it properly LOL. Sounds like a bit of a nightmare though, and probably expensive to fix.
I once drove the Landrover for about ten k's with my head out the tiny sliding window, as migraine symptoms meant I couldn't see out of the windscreen. I got home and parked on the road. When the pain finally subsided I was amazed to see I had parked it almost in the middle of the road. I was living in Reefton then, and it says much about small town West Coast priorities, as no-one hassled me about it, even though it sat there for about 5 hours in the middle of a week day!
That day the diff came off I was about 5 k's from the tar seal, on a seldom used forestry track. I had caught 2 live wild goats to sell, and had 3 dogs with me. I hid my tools etc in the scrub and walked out with difficulty with my only sometimes obedient dogs mostly behind me, and the goats ahead on leads. The dogs and goats I tied up off the side of the highway, while I flagged down a car and managed to persuade the nervous lady driver to call my wife to come and get me. The seven of us in a 2 door Mazda 323, had a nerve wracking 20 k trip back to town!
Later NUGGY

Edited by user Tuesday, 11 September 2012 11:13:24 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

No I'm Not Rosco, I'm John

should have brought a landrover

Landrovers tend to get a person into trouble - garages wanting bills paid, Hire purchase man sending the heavies around. No it hasnt actually happened to me - the closest was my sister Television set and I happened to be there but thats a story in its own right - I actually had the older bloke in tears (I kid you not) lecturing him about how he was an evil arsehole who loved his job repossessing stuff from people who were less fortunate than him and how he was a leech sucking the poor and destitute dry - his sidekick the 'heavy' stood at the bottom of the steps with his arms folded trying to look like the Kempai Tai - with me at the top of the steps telling him that the moment he entered the house he was fair game - "Come on dare you to" - he just stood there looking blank. The advice out of this is that they cannot enter your house without prior notice or couldnt then and the retailer had given no intention of repossessing so I did know that the rights were on my sisters side - Himmler and Gorilla just arrived out of the blue and it just happened to be when I was there. As it was we won the round and my sister - there was a Pop group back then named after her - 'Twisted Sister' - got to keep her TV...actually I think that the Brother in law got it - when they separated.

Landrovers also do strange things in the middle of absolutely no where - as I said in one of my earlier comments above - in any case this next photo was nearly as far as you could drive on our last claim. The last time I went down here the wheel went through the bridge decking but today it is now washed right out and negotiable by nothing past the bridge - back then you could drive another half mile and that was the end of the road - the claim went another two or so miles.

At the time the photo was taken it was already a risky move trying to get up here and on several occasions had a great deal of trouble getting through the wash out. The track in front of the Landrover is now more or less swamp even though it slopes downhill and has become spongy through seepage and totally non negotiable to any 4WD vehicle - the last time I was here my son and I got the bikes down but I insisted in taking both of them back up as it is now risky even with three and four wheeler bikes.

Edited by user Monday, 1 October 2012 12:50:04 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Progressing further up our claim the river of course got smaller and smaller - It was a long walk to the top of the claim and the further up the riuver we worked the further we had to walk to begin from where we had left off last trip.

Every crack and every crevice yielded on average half an ounce - I guess it had never been worked - magic days and a magic place and I bet theres a thousand more places like this throughout the country but the strange thing is that modern fossickers seem to think the best areas to work are either what has been worked over a hundred times before or where someone else happens to have a claim - not true. This photo was taken from 1500 metres up the stream from my Landrover and after we had worked this stretch of river - it was taken when walking up the river further to do a days work.

Edited by user Friday, 19 October 2012 5:19:24 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified