IN MEMORY OF OL FRANK

Ol Frank could best be described as the Detecting mate from HELL I meet ol frank back in  2009 , it was up at the Burke & Will's roadhouse when i was working up in the NT .It was one night i was outside ( trying to impress one of the barmaids with my little container of equally small gold   ) when this scruffy ,dirty ,jockey sized fellow appeared by my side ,dressed in thongs ,stubbies and jacky howe singlet ,his standard form of dress  nor did he wear a hat .he was aged i'd guess some where in his 70's ,and tough to go with it .He had this thick ,hard to understand English as it turned out he'd been a 2nd world war orphan ,from the old Checklovasaka ,i think .Well i think for the next 3 days all we did was argue ,as ol frank cottoned on to me like a bad smell and i made the mistake of letting ol frank come out with me ,to many of those   the first night !!!! So any way next morning at daylight we head out and i'm showing ol frank my patch ,and he'd say  , "No good here ,no gold here ,or no ,no good here only small gold here '' it didn't matter where i took him ,it was no good ,by this stage 10 o'clock     i'd finally had enough ,and was keen to detect this gully with this layer of alluvial wash in the side of it ,but no according to ol frank it was uselless too !!! as i'm strapping the 3500 on ,ol franks going on  , ''Minelab it no good ,it not find you much gold '' and out of the back of my toyota ol frank unrapped from this dirty ol blanket ,with this old Garrett . I don't know how old it was ,or what model  it was ,but it was painted in this bright fluroscent PINK    he reckoned it was a lot harder to loose !!!!! and when he switched it on ,the thing sounded by my best descrption as a bag full of cats fighting    He'd had , this  ( very cluey mate trick it up for him    ) Well for the next hour i reckon all we did was argue over threeshold ,target response ,etc with me burying a little test piece ,and testing with both detectors ,i coundn't tell with his ,the thing ran that unstable ,and frank insisting that i turn my gain up as much as possible ,so i might have a chance of finding some gold  even driving home ol frank would throw his empty cans out the window ,i'd lock the brakes up and back up and make him pick it ,'' what you worry about for he'd say thats where it came from ''   anyway day 2 and i'd decided to go out on my own ,without telling ol frank ,so i left about a hour earlier ,i get out there and just strapping up ,look up and see these headlights coming ,and yes it's ol frank ,he gets out ,''me sorry he says ,me not talk too much today '' that didn't last long !!! and i'm looking at his outside duel wheel on this old  van he had ,and this clump of what appeared to be Spinefex growing out of this big split he had in the wall  the tube was stuffed so he'd stuffed it with Spinefex .he also started this horrible habit of trying to show me up by following me ,i'd be going along when the 3500 when it would start getting noisy ,i'd auto-tune it ,re ground balance ,all to no avail,getting quite frustrated ,then look behind me ,thered be ol frank following me with that bloody thing of his  Did ol Frank find  any Gold ,yes ,       i think he found 6-7 pieces ,tiny little pieces ,i  found 3          my only consolation was one of my pieces was in the perfect shape of a minature BANANA  about 25 mm long ,to which i got a jeweller to put a small  chain on it and gave it away to my late mother .On the last night we were together ,and after a few of these ol frank got rather sort of sombre / in a reflective mood and he told me in a quite tone about his experiences under Nazi occupation dewring the war when he was a kid being the sole survivor out of his family of 5 . about midnight as i got to go over to my swag to crash for the night ,ol frank piped up '' you want to see gold  ,real gold '' he took me over to his van and in the back were some flour drums,he poped the lid of one and it was chock a block full of quartz specimens ,FULL OF GOLD        The other drum had probably 2 '' in the bottom of it of nuggetts of all different sizes .as i lay in my swag that last  night ,it took me a long while to get to sleep ,thinking about ol frank had said and shown me .ol frank should of been 150 yrs old for the places he'd been,and things he'd done .i asked him once if he'd ever detectored in the GT ,o yes he said ,good gold too ,thou he made me laugh at times ,ol frank was completely anti - estabishlment- anti goverment ,he'd never held a fossickers permit !!! he was telling me he was detecting in this forrest some where in the GT and comes to this fence ,it's all farming land on the other side ,now fences didn't stop ol frank either ,so he climbs thru and detecting away ,when this ute pulls up on this hill above him 150-200 meteres from him ,frank thinks its to rough for them to drive down so he keeps poking allong ,when suddenly he hears a gunshot ,and dirt flys up near his feet , frank says ,cheeky bugger ,so he start 's to wander back over to the fence ,then another bang and dirt flys up behind him ,so he hurry's along a bit quicker this time and giving the shooter a big  mouthfull over his shoulder as he's trotting along ,and gets to the fence and pauses to look back at the shooter and giving him the finger ,thinking he'd be safer at just how good a shot is  he  at 3-400 meters !!!! when suddenly another spray of dirt flys up at his feet ,''oh no i thinks him bloody good shot '' Another time his in this caravan park some where in the GT,all this happened in the late 70's or early 80's i gathered ,and there's this mine not to far away ,now lease pegs and signs didn't stop ol frank either ,and one day these miners pulled up and start giving him the riot act ,well ol frank gives them a mouth full and one of the miners gets stuck into him badly too ,till the other miner pulled his mate off frank ,frank said ''ohhh i'm glad he did cause i didn't think i'd get up off the ground a 4th time     '' and he woke up to the fact that the haul road into the mine was actually paved with gold ,so he'd wait till after dark and walk thru the bush till he got to  the road and commence to dig it up with crow bar and shovel ,this gravel they'd layed down .he said they nearly caught him as they'd clueyed on to what was going on ,and would drive along quietly at night with the headlights off ,trying to catch him ,so he'd string a bit of fishing line across the road ,hooked up to a cow bell ,to warn him of there driving along . ol frank had often said to me over those 3 days , '' this area no good only waisting time here,we pack up and head north ,i show you how to find gold ,real gold as he used to put it ''      '' and to use a proper detector ,not them minelab  I set you up for life '',he'd promise . On that last night he'd also told me that when i was up in Darwin next to drop in and get the keys off this real estate agent  to his luxury apartment   I thought that was a bit of bull as when you looked at him it appeared he didn't have 2 bob to rub together .Anyway end of the year comes up and i'm up in Darwin having a break and in the meantime i coundn't stop from thinking about ol frank ,so i drops into this agents office ,and ask at the front counter about ol frank ,these 2 women looked at me and at each other ,not knowing who i was on about ,i didn't have a surname ,and actually frank wasn't his first name anyway as he reckoned his proper first name was to difficult for english speaking people .as i'm ready to walk out this agent comes out his office ,he knew frank well ,he'd handled his estate for years ,he'd also sold up 2 of his investment houses , as well as his luxury apartment ,  as part of winding up his estate after his death       It turns out ol Frank was killed only probably about a month after i last saw him ,by getting T- boned by a drunk driver .I guess if there's a moral to this yarn ,i guess it would have to be ,never judge a book by it's cover .Well anyway ol mate ,i don't know weither you went upstairs  or downstairs ,but i do know one thing for sure ,i haven't forgotten about you .Cheers Hugh62 .

Great story mate!
Thanks for sharing that!!

Thanks Goldminer,Cheers Hugh62.

Nice story worth a repeat somewhere.

Thanks for sharing your story..
That was a great read..

You did Ol frank proud I reckon..
Sad ending but..
Yep. Never judge a book by its cover..

Great story about an interesting old fella for sure. Thanks Hugh.