Greenhithe a Cursory Search

A quick hour and a half trip to Greenhithe on Monday night, after work/pub by the three of us. Ritchie, Gareth and myself produced a few good finds. Being sober, I drove whilst the other two imbibed burbies. We did two parks, one by the local hall for about an hour and then the 30 minutes before nightfall was spent in and around the one by the tennis courts.
Interesting finds in the first park were a silver earring by Ritchie, I found a toy car (hotwheels). Gareth just found coins. One was a Peruvian 20 centimos. A cool find indeed, Dropped maybe by a Peruvian peasant whilst watering his donkey.


Greenhithe the 'Machu Picchu' of NZ



The second park was clean, not a coin between us, just a couple of iron targets. Ritchie hit the grass areas under the trees next to the sports ground where we all picked up healthy signals. Older decimal coins were found in every dig (3).  But with the ground like concrete digging was arduous, reinstatement was not easy and the light was fading away fast. Though the floodlights from the tennis courts assisted us we noted this venue as a future winter adventure.

Spending discovered for the evening between us was only $3.30, I weighed in with 30 blood draining cents while Gareth pulled out $1.80. Ritchie hitting $1.20 but with a nice silver earring. Home we trudged.

See you out there.

Olympic effort out west

We set out once again to trawl around the Ponsonby beaches but due to a late start and early morning appointments out west we decided to hit Olympic Park in New Lynn. Three parks, two in bark and one in sand made up the Olympic complex. We also had in mind to visit Blockhouse Bay beach. Midge Marsden performed there in 'Music in the Parks' to a large audience who we hoped suffered from dropsy. To help us with the expedition was Anton, a friend I met on the Spartacus set during my acting phase. It was Anton's first MD adventure and I hope the lack of spectacular finds did not dampen his enthusiasm.

Olympic Park New Lynn

Gareth won the day at the park with a few dollars spending with finds being quite scarce in the bark. I had trouble with the metal pins holding down the weed mat under the bark so I switched to the sand area and had a modicum of success with a succession of 10 cent coins. But Gareth had found the goldies and won the park test. Anton I think managed just the one coin. We moved on.

After a few navigational difficulties, we found ourselves at BHB beach. It was another hot day and the beach was well inhabited with visitors. I've always liked this beach, though the beach is an ugly beach it is surrounded with nice walkways and flowing manicured grass areas. A old stone shelter bought back memories of a teenage love affair and the boat club sits well at the end of the perimeter pathway.

Blurred BHB Beach

To spruce it all up it looked like the council had dumped fresh sand on the beach to cover up the unsightly littered black sand or mud that is usually there. We cleaned up at the beach, literally, as some of the rubbish from the concert was still visible. I found several small denomination coins and I also uncovered a cheap heart shaped pendant with only one sparkly stone out of many left. Probably fell off of a keyring I think. There is also a bark park at the beach but it was too well populated for us three to take it over. Why can't kids find other places to play other than barked parks?
Gareth and Anton failed to produce too much apart from various items made of  mostly iron and I think they had just a few coins between them. The grass area also gave us plenty of signals but with the ground being rock hard at the moment we will wait until the rains come and digging is more amenable to sort that one out. We are researching as we go. Many of our summer digs will be revisited in the winter when digging is easier. Summer is a lazy time for sand and bark.
Well an interesting and pleasant day with scant reward but it was good to catch up with Anton and one can never knock being out in the fresh air.
Anton took a few photo's and hopefully they will be published here soon.
See you out there.