Summer has arrived early with a few pretty hot days and warm nights over the last few weeks - the temperature getting up to 37 during the days. I love the hot weather and am enjoying the mining, nearly all the other miners on the field have ended their mining season and have gone home. The majority only have basic camps with no electricity on the field at all - it is easy to keep warm with a fire, so once the first couple of warm days arrive, they are all packing up and heading home. I have set this camp up as a home with good insulation and air conditioning so summer is not a problem - I will be staying until Xmas time as usual and end up being the only miner here for a couple of months.

On the mining front I have been working both sites with some success on Gernot's lease. I have had the drill over there again and got good results from two of the six holes put down so have been busy opening up one of those areas. The levels are strong and are all over the place which is a good sign, there has been lots of trace and good potch ( clear opal ) showing, so I am feeling pretty confident that some nice material is not far away - it is a matter of moving the dirt.

The mining will be closed down for a while though as Lyn and I are off on holidays this weekend. As I mentioned in the last post, we are off to China for two weeks on a golf tour and, after having such a great time last year, I am looking forward to it immensely. We don't fly out until the 18th so are heading down to our beach shack to do a few days work with some major renovations to be done. We have a site in a big holiday park at Diamond Beach near Foster - Tuncurry right on the beach and spend as much of Jan - March each year there as possible. Lyn actually bought it on Ebay a few years ago and it is a pretty old camp as the images show. We have bought another van to replace the present one and we are also getting the outside area under the roof paved to make it more comfortable. The old fence is coming down and something a bit more modern and weatherproof going in so, we are looking forward to the change. We probably won't have time to repaint it but that will be a project for next January. The site has been a bit of an eyesore for a while and I know the park owners are pleased that we are finally doing some improvements, not that anything has been said, but when I contacted them to let them know, I could sense the relief that finally we were going to tidy the place up. I will have some photos for the next post after we return from China.

We have both been swinging a golf club on weekends to get in a bit of practise before the big trip. Most of the people on the tour are golfers so I don't worry to much about the competition, it is just a great experience to play on some of the best courses in Asia. Lyn has been showing her usual golfing style by smashing the tops in on some plastic balls she has been hitting in town. I am going to organise a lesson for us both during next week so hopefully that might help her a bit, or get Pete, our brother in law, to give her a few pointers. Knowing Lyn, her poor golf will stand her in good stead to have the perfect excuse to go shopping, especially if some of the other women are non golfers, as there was last year.

The next post will be after we return so will give an update then on the trip. Images this time show where I am mining at the present time showing the levels of stone, Lyn's style with a golf club, our beach shack in its present state, also caught a frill necked lizard on camera but I am not sure whether he was sun baking his tummy or with spring in the air and no mates about, the stick was the next best thing - I will leave it to your imagination.