Puddler Bill said:A piston moving in a cylinder is a mechanical device or machine.
A bait or bilge pump has a piston moving in a cylinder and thus the above applies.
If a bait pump (sic) is legal then a slurpee pump would be legal to extract gravel and its not.
It matters little if the device is motorised or hand driven.
A mechanical device, or an eductor cannot be used to extract gravel from a stream bed or bank in Victoria.
Under Victorian law and under the authority of a Miners Right you must use hand tools only for extracting gravel.
You can use a pump to pump water, but not to pump gravel.
A piston in a cylinder is under any definition you would like to present, a pump so again the previous line applies here.
The description of a bilge/bait/yabbie pump or whatever you would like to call it can be changed to whatever you would like, but its
means of operation is suction to remove gravel.
I would ask anyone to show me legislation anywhere that says anything to the contrary.
Show me where it in the legislation it states what a non mechanical tool is, when referring to law you cant just say a piston is a mechanical device so you cant use it. That your interpretation not everyone's.
There is no definition in the act nor does the act refer to a definition elsewhere therefore by law the statement is open to interpretation and thus non enforceable.
My feeling is that when reading a document like this after youve been issued a miners right the assumption is that the document relates to mining. The limitation of a miners right excludes the usual mechanical tools that a miner would normally be entitled to i.e. dozer, backhoe, tilt lift, drills, jackhammer explosives etc.
I don't want to rock the boat as much as anyone else but i cant see the logic in no suckers at all..... I can do the same thing with a brush and shovel accept i'l do more damage because i'll have to move every rock.