What's your 'almost in the POO POO' story?

[Anolphart]

In the light of todays tragic result of the prospector having died in WA, and not wishing to preempt the cause of his death, have you ever had a mishap whilst prospecting that could have had dire consequences? And what did you learn from it?

Ill start off with my recent experience and as is often the case, its usually through negligence or not concentrating. I was detecting in the Paddy Ranges near Maryborough and as usual I entered the Man Overboard function on my GPS to store the waypoint of my car before heading off into the scrub to detect for a few hours. When I was ready to return, I activated a return course on my GPS to take me back to the MOB waypoint only to find that it showed that my car was about 170 km away and in the opposite direction to where I should be going. Obviously I had not created the latest MOB function correctly, and I had picked another MOB waypoint that I had used previously. I was using the latest Garmin Etrex 10 and the joystick used to mark the waypoint I have found is somewhat a hit and a miss affair. In this case it was a miss. I was about 2 km away from my car and I knew roughly in what direction it was but sometimes you can be about 50 meters from your car and not see it.

Then I remembered that the GPS has a trackback feature, and as I had left the GPS on the whole time, it was a simple matter of retracing my footsteps, albeit not directly back to the car as I had meandered all over the place like a drunken sailor.

Now I always confirm that the cars waypoint is entered and all other MOB entries have been deleted. I always carry spare batteries, a compass and now have a second GPS. I also carry a PLB, a phone as well as compression bandages and adequate water. I doubt that my situation was very serious, but had it been in a more remote place than where I was, I could have been in the poo poo.

So what's your 'almost in the poo poo' story?

 

[Tathradj]

Standing in a shallow depression in the middle of a paddock wondering why
my detector would not ground balance.
Only to see just over the rim of the detector cracks opening up in the ground.
Was standing on the rotten cap of a 200 foot mine shaft under me. 8)
Yes, I actually had to change myself. :8

 

[Davent]

Got heat exhaustion on a very hot and humid day. Decided to take a shirt cut and walked up the same hill I just walked down! Had run out if water, and was confused. Headache and vomiting. Managed to get a signal on my phone, and found my way back with google maps. It was meant to be a 4 hour session that turned into about 14 hours. Very close one. Found about 2 grams and was sure I'd found a new patch.....only got the 2 grams!

 

[user 7268]

Brand new quad that first trip out failed to start .................... was nearly a long trip back or in fact may have ended in a crawl or simply just ended :N:

 

[HeadsUp]

Not mine but repeating a story read here years ago about a guy working in the bottom of a pit.

He lit a cigarette , took a few puffs and lowered his arm , he raised his arm and had another puff but found the Ciggie had gone out .

He relit and repeated that twice before it twigged on him that there was no oxygen in the bottom of the pit , ie there was carbon monoxide rising from a source extinguishing the cigarette , he got out in time before it killed him but carbon monoxide in confined spaces or exhaust fumes from pumps that settle in a shaft or pit can and do kill people.

Dont enter confined spaces without doing gas test first....

*** and Dont position an engine powered pump anywhere near a space where the fumes can settle because you will go to sleep and never wake up ***

 

[Wishfull]

I was working at Yulara N.T. in the late 80's . Decided to take family out for a look around on one of the many tracks around the place. Did'nt tell anyone where we we going and bugger all water just what I had for topping up the radiator for the HZ Holden 202 wagon. We had followed a narrow winding track there was a shallow dry creek bed in front of us and since it was too narrow to turn around we had no other choice but to drive through it. We got half way up the other side and the back driving wheel was up high enough that the car lost traction. We were stuck. Dark look from my now X wife. It took me an hour to dig and jack the car untill I finally got the car up the other side turned it around and got out the other side. It was a fairly warm day 30 odd. That was just plain dumb. Learnt a lot since then. Just goes to show how a series of errors can lead to tragedy, we could have all died out there.
I've had many close calls in my life but, that one nearly cost my whole family their lives.

 

[Jaros]

It IS tempting fate isn't?

 

[Wishfull]

Yes it is tempting fate. Turned out the reason the HZ was using water was it had a cracked head. Not real handy when your up north. :/

 

[Wishfull]

Brand new quad that first trip out failed to start .................... was nearly a long trip back or in fact may have ended in a crawl or simply just ended :N:

Why wouldn't the quad bike start Bogger ?

 

[user 7268]

Brand new quad that first trip out failed to start .................... was nearly a long trip back or in fact may have ended in a crawl or simply just ended :N:

Why wouldn't the quad bike start Bogger ?

Turned out to be a bad connection in one of the loom plugs ...................... a pin in plug had pushed out the back. Once again in 40 degree heat stripping all the plastics off with the useless tool kit provided wasn't fun. When I rang dealer and explained what had happened and what the consequences could have been the care factor was absolutely ZERO = ZILCH
Have to add that is one big advantage of using a quad but in that due to it's mobility over even a 4B it's usually pretty close to where one is swinging so access to a lot more gear such as water, food etc is basically nearly always there with you.
The thing that put me on track to it was had noticed thermo fan had been changing revs while I was moving along prior to pulling up and turning off. Obviously once problem found the voltage drop across the loose connection being the cause. I was 25 k out from the station.

 

[Reeks]

I crossed the Turon River solo on high water after rain at Long Point for a shortcut to Stuart Town.
I shouldn't have done it but gee it was one hell of an adrenaline hit

 

[Ironman]

I love adventure and also trying to push the limits - you only get to live this life once. The unfortunate side is that almost every outing is an "almost in the poo poo" story. The plus side is that I never make the same 'mistake' again. **** happens. It's how you deal with it, and what you learn from it.

Now, when I go camping, 4wd, fishing, swinging a detector, etc I always carry the following items;
Adequate drinking water for the trip and additional water.
Additional food, snacks, etc.
Satellite phone
EPIRB
SPOT tracker
GPS
Compass
Knife
Fire lighter
Basic first aid
and, my pipe and pipe tobacco - for that time when I know the **** is about to hit the fan.

 

[AussieChris]

Well, I nearly fell down that darn mineshaft.....close call for sure. Shot in the back of the thigh with a .22LR not so fun either

Another time I went hiking with a mate, we were probably only 12 and 14 years old. We left Dhu Robin Outcrop which was 4.5km from home, I spent so much time there as a kid and decided to see what was past the next ridgeline to the SE.

We hiked for hours up into the hills on a very hot day, I have no idea how far we went. We found a gorge that had really cool clean water running through it. It had pools of water about the size of jacuzzis between each run, and the pools were chocka with small trout. It made little sense as I knew there were trout up past Coolah but had no idea there were some to be found closer to home as it was way too hot, put it down to maybe trout fingerlings from possibly a dam down from the gorge.

I have scoured Google Earth and Six Maps several times and still have no clue as to where it actually was, 30 years does that I guess.

We stayed in the gorge for hours swimming as the day got hotter, we were only young and dumb so we only took 2x 2L cordial bottles of iced water wrapped in tea towels. We set back home sometime right in the heat of the day and covered only about 2km when my mate Robert slipped and broke both the plastic bottles we had filled back in the clear pools. At a guess we still had somewhere around 10-12km, possibly more to get back to the rock outcrop, or we could find some high ground and head home as the crow flys and cut a few km. Both of us panicked a bit from breaking the bottles, I knew there were some bore water troughs on the way back and it might have been very mineralized and foul to drink but it would keep up going. We decided to circle back to the fresh water and rehydrate as much as we could stand, of course, we both ended up vomiting it back up. We stayed there until it cooled off a bit, wet our clothes and started on our way home. We walked for hours and both of us were in a bad way, we did find a bore to drink from and finally stumbled home sometime around 10 pm at night, heat exhaustion, bad sunburn and parents that were not very impressed.....42C that day.

Skip forward about 10 years, Dad and I took the boat out, a 7m glass on ply Hartley flybridge cruiser that we restored from pretty much a bare hull. We went out the Macleay River at South West Rocks, the bar there is a POO POO spot to cross at the best of times. We travelled around 7nm/13km down to Fish Rock and spent the day fishing down there (it was before the changes to fishing there came in). We were on the leeward side of the rock as a rotten North Easter blew up out of nowhere, we pulled up stumps and started motoring home but with the current and the wind we were barely making any headway, the boat had no worries up on the plane, but I had to just gently press it through the chop from the NE and the swell from the E. No real places to hide from a NE'ster so had no choice but to push on, as we came around the headland at Arakoon I saw the bar from the Macleay was breaking kilometres out to sea. My heart sank, I had taken that boat over the bar plenty of times and I was always on edge and alert, but this time I was downright scared. I had more time at the helm than Dad, I always just left him with the honours of making us a coffee at 5 am or just kicking back to the radio.
I sat in the bay for a bit watching the sets trying to get an idea of how long I would have to push through. Of course, we both had our PFD's on and we had secured everything, and I radioed into Trial Bay Coastal Patrol for both some advice and a heads up I guess. It was not getting any better and the tide was against us so I talked Dad through my plan, the line I would take etc. I set ahead at a speed as to sit on the back of a wave and not ride down the face. Carefully steered her in with my heart pounding out of my chest the whole time, took a few cross chop waves right across the starboard side of the boat but I could not alter course fearing I could slip sideways down a swell wave coming from behind.
We made it past the tip of the Southern breakwall and breathed a sigh of relief, I probably had the shakes the whole way back to the boatshed. I remember just sitting there when we tied up at our mooring, we had a coffee and just looked at each other shaking our heads and dropping a few choice words about how stupid we were and how lucky we were to get away with it.

I just gave the old boy a call then to talk to him about it, he said it can play in his head like a movie, crossing that bar and was still swearing about it on the phone just then, 20 years have passed.

 

[7.62marksman]

lead up to this you must know i HATE swimming in ocean to many things that will bite you sting you or eat you
a few years ago my daughter was about 14 (she is 30 something) we went to Bombo Beach for a swim (locals will know the one i am talking about)
as we walked down i didnt look at the water to see if there were any rips about (i knew there were bad rips on that beach but we never had trouble before)
she had her body board so ran down the beach and jumped in the rest of us wondered slowly down with all the gear/food
getting onto the beach a lady was standing there an turned around and said i think that young girl is in trouble out there
i looked up and sure enough she was in the middle of a big rip and going out fast
words were said that would make the devil blush
so i did what all dads do wallet phone keys gone shirt off (no buttons left)
and then into the rip i went as that i figured would be the fastest way to reach her and start swimming out not thinking to grab my sons board
thank god she had the sense to hang onto the board and not panic to much
i reached her and the look of terror on her face i will never forget
we both got our breath back and had a bit of a joke about getting me to swim in the ocean
then started paddling/swimming across the rip (back it those days thats how we were told get out of a rip) when we got to calm water we started heading back in
at this stage we were about 150m out
as we got closer to the sand the rip took as again just pulled our legs from under us as we had not much strength left
anyway we got back in neither of us could walk as our legs were like rubber so we just sat for about 20 min to get our strength back
i asked her why she didnt put her arm up and she said she was to scared to let go of the board
one thing i did notice was there were surfers out there and not one came to help
blind Feddie could see we were in real poo poo and they just sat and watched
any way we have never been back there to swim again and now as she is a good surfer and knows how to read the water she is fine

 

[Mackka]

Hey Aussie, just reading that I had my heart in my throat.
Glad you made it, both of you.
Mackka

 

[Chiron52]

one thing i did notice was there were surfers out there and not one came to help
blind Feddie could see we were in real poo poo and they just sat and watched

I have noticed while watching Bondi Rescue on TV, often when the lifesavers are flat out trying to rescue large groups of people, board riders will sit and watch or just completely ignore the people in trouble. And only rarely to they paddle over to help (and thank you for doing so).

Closest I've come to a poo-poo moment was many years ago, back when the Hume Hwy was undivided.
One night (early hours of the morning), 3 of us were returning to Wollongong from a speedway meeting in Canberra. I was driving my old Valiant Charger when, half way down a hill, there was a large bang and the car suddenly turned sideways. We were sliding down the Hwy sideways at about 120k/h. Without batting an eyelid I managed to straighten the car and bring it to a halt off to the side of the road. We jumped out to find the re-tread on the right rear tyre had peeled back 180 degrees and had ripped the wheel arch to shreds. Just at that moment a large truck came round the corner at the bottom of the hill.
Standing there looking at the damage and thinking about what could have been, I started shaking as delayed shock set in and had to sit down.
NOTE: 2 days earlier I had noticed a shudder in the steering but couldn't find anything wrong. I removed the front wheels and swapped them over with the back wheels. What would have happened if the damaged tread had still been on the front when the tread let go ............. ?

 

[7.62marksman]

yes some just dont want to get involved if there is a chance that things go wrong and then people start to point the finger and throwing the blame around
i have been at car crashes where people just stood back and watched for fear of doing something wrong and then getting sued because of it
its a sad world we have created when things like that happen and people stand back and watch

 

[nuggetino]

Went prospecting in a rainforest area up toward cape york. No tracks in or out. Was pretty stupid thing to do come to think of it. Basically I hiked in to find an old gold mine. It was a 5km hike by GPS taking the most direct route. Carried my detector and 3l of water in. It was January and day temps had been between 35 and 40 with relative humidity upwards of 100%. I'd been in near 50 degree heat in WA a number of times and it didn't feel nearly this hot. I started to walk in at 5am to beat the heat.

It wasn't long before I was crawling under vegetation on my hands and knees following brush turkey trails and then climbing over blankets of vines. I eventually hit a creek line and things improved though only temporarily. By the time I got to the spot I was knackered, found no gold for my half assed effort to detect the gully and had polished off the 3l water and probably lost twice that in sweat as evaporative cooling is virtually nil. I knew there'd be a likely spot to refill my water and indeed I found a deep pool concentrated with eels at the elbow of a creek. I had carried water purification tablets in so refilled and treated the water. It was after midday and I decided I'd better head back given the time it's taken to walk in.

Making my way back I found my GPS was in and out of signal due to the overwhelming density of the vegetation. We're talking a place that made the jungle in predator look like a golf course. To make matters worse I began to smell smoke and at the top of the next hill it became all too real when I spied several fires burning to the west of me with the nearest being perhaps 2k's away. I had heard an aircraft flying over earlier in the day and I guess the area was targeted for a burn off. I felt a moment of panic set in like one of those nightmares in which you're trying to outrun an axe murderer but you're legs don't work. I couldn't climb over, under or plough through the tangle of brush and vines fast enough. I eventually abandoned the GPS as waiting for signals took too long and went for plan B which was to walk East as there was a north/south dirt track I was guaranteed to intersect sooner or later.

I wanted to rest but the wind was blowing my direction and with it the fires were getting nearer. I was hiking up and down near vertical terrain and every summit followed with another. I had removed my shirt because cooling myself became priority over the insects and brush. My water was gone again and I needed more. I had 100's of leeches feeding on my legs but wasn't about to bother with them. I was more concerned about avoiding the snakes which were everywhere thick on the ground some of which were venomous (coastal taipan). Eventually I'd scaled the final mountain and was standing atop a ridgeline. it was a 200 meter descent down the cliff. It looked impossible but the only other option I had was to follow it North or south for several K's and hope to find an easier route down. South was out of the question due to the fires, the nearest of which had moved into where I'd walked in from.

The cliff face was over grown with vines and trees and I figured I could probably hang onto the net of vines and climb down though it'd put my in direct contact with any creepy crawlies. I started to make my way down clinging to the vines. Things were going well given the circumstances until about halfway down when I put my hand on a moving mass of green about the size of a footy. That was my first/worst experience with green ants in full fury. They were all over me like flies on ****. No shirt on, they just moved in and started munching away. If I were allergic to these insects I'd surely endured enough bites to die many times over. The worst thing was I couldn't release my grip to fight them off. Just had to carry on climbing down. Eventually I did make it down. I felt very out out of it at this point. I don't know if it was the ant bites, heat, dehydration, blood loss due to the leeches or a poisonous plant I'd come into contact with along the way. Hell perhaps I was bitten by a snake unawares and among all the scratches and bumps I didn't have a chance in hell in identifying bite marks if they were present.

Never mind I was down but not yet out. It was another K or so to the road from here by my estimate. I swatted off those remaining green ants which hadn't yet died of old age or lost interest and then took a piss in my empty water bottle. I poured the orange brew all over myself without a second thought. It did make me stink but as for it's cooling benefits there were none worth noting. I dumped my detecting gear and marked the location on the gps so I could come back for it should I ever find my way back to the car. The sun was setting at this point and I walked back along the dirt track in the dark. There were plague numbers of mosquito's at this time. Clouds of them lifted from the boggy marshlands to the east and yet I didn't care. Every other nasty had already marinated my skin with pincers, stingers and teeth so what were a couple of staws gonna do . It was a 5km trek south until I hit the car. I made it back to my van and went into recovery mode. I hosed myself down, rehydrated and cranked up the 12v fan which i positioned to blow air across me and help cool down. My heart was racing and I felt hot for hours like I couldn't regulate my body temp. I stayed awake til 4am repeating this process to cool myself. I found out some time later I most likely was suffering from heat stroke which would also explain feeling out of it or incoherent thoughts. The following morning I woke up and cracked open a beer..Then I recovered my detecting equipment.

 

[BigWave]

I think you guys have spotted very isolated incidents where the surfers just watched. I would not have believed it.
My old surfing mates and I have pulled so many (mostly foreign kids with parents who could not swim) out of rips (usually on boards), and I watched many others doing so.
Never have I seen surers just idly watching.
When my kids were younger, I taught them rip swimming - starting in smaller ones, then graduating to large ones (having planned our exit) as they became highly proficient swimmers and body surfers. It's a great way to quickly get out to the breakers. As young adults they also would have no hesitation in getting into a solid rip to go to someone's aid.
BTY, my avatar name was given by some Hawaiian mates basically calling me a chicken ***** for not surfing the monsters they did. I accepted the sarcasm and the name BigWave stuck and became bearable - then friendy. I was OK not surfing some of those days and just watching from the shore. I'm still here, but one isn't (POO POO surf you might say), and I hear that another may have gone the same way.

 

[Anolphart]

Wow, I guess all of my adventures were either low risk or well planned, but you guys cant say that you havent had adventurous lives and youve survived them to talk about it.

Gee, my most frightening moment in my life was when I was about 6 years old, I nearly fell down the long drop but we wont talk about that, OK?

OK, so to make it a little bit more interesting, I think that the person that will have the most likes be awarded with a Certificate of Outstanding Pooism as shown below. This award is highly sought after so think of it as a privilege if you should you be awarded with it! So guys n' gals please vote by liking the one you think deserves the Poo Award!