We decided these that these school holidays we would let the kids all choose one fun holiday activity each.Ben's choice was to go prospecting, so we drove over to Ravensthorpe on Wednesday.
We stayed the night in a funny little cabin in the Ravensthorpe Caravan Park and drove around to a heap of different locations hunting for interesting rocks. Ben had such a great time and really enjoyed every minute of it.
We visited a few old mines which were facinating and full of history and old equipment. There were colourful rocks everywhere we went and everyone collected samples to bring home and look up.
Some of the sites were quite dangerous. The ground in some of the areas of bush we walked through was full of pits and holes where people had tried to find gold. We had to keep a very close watch on the children, especially Jacob, who just wanted to jump in them all!
These ducks were so lovely. There was a mum and dad duck and heaps of tiny baby ducklings. We had to follow them slowly along the road for so long as they just wouldn't get off the road! The kids thought they were so funny.
Let me assure you that Jacob has no intention of collecting this big rock as a "sample". He just wanted to show how strong he was and then throw it in the nearest puddle!
Ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch... so simple but so delicious! I think it's eating outside in the fresh air that makes all the difference.
Jacob climbed up this sheer cliff face and then slid all the way down and landed on his head! He just stood up and dusted himself down, then checked out all his scratches and went off to find another dangerous activity to scare his parents with...
Here the kids were actually asking, "Can we go down there?" It was a big hole with steep sides and possibly no bottom... umm, I don't think so!
It was very windy at this lookout.
if you ever come back down there is loads more to look, I know as I am a local of this town and I know that bush better then the back of my hand, im only sixteen but I grew up in that bush building and prospecting and just being a kid, there is a lot more then old mines and machinery out there their is an old orchard at the back of the Ravensthorpe range that was ran by col bennet back in the gold rush when the rail way was running from Ravensthorpe to Hopetoun, if you ever want to go prospecting and panning for gold and actually find some my tip for you is go to Annabelle creek, it is just Jerramungup of Ravensthorpe, right next to the meridian information bay my self and my dad and mates have found gold in that creek and if you do some research you will find out that the Dunn brothers found gold in Annabelle creek and were reward a 4096 hectare claim which is what started the gold rush, and with in one night hundreds of people came to Ravensthorpe and started small mines, and some ended up a decent size, like mount iron for instance that was only small and then it got bigger, and then you have the caves (ADITS) ion mount Chester that you can see from Hopetoun road which are both manganese mines and the creek at the base of that hill has gold in it as well I should stop rambling on but if you do come back down im sure we will bump into each other its such a small world :P
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