Gold Rush - Kathy Sykes diary

Production team Day 6 - Accurate Weighing Balance
Astonishing first day! Began with a helicopter ride up and over Franz Josef Glacier. Was awake most of the night - too excited to sleep, at the prospect of this flight (small child!). Had been hoping hard that the weather would hold.

Brilliant blue sky - and a 'copter ride to die for. We swooped over smooth desert - like snow-fields; craggy folded, madly-blue ice sculptures; over deep fissures - of intense blue, over snowy, jagged tips of mountains and over the whole Frank Josef Valley. The finale was swooping over a valley choked up in cloud … skirting just above cloud level, in pointed bits of tree-top sticking out of the cloud. Woosh! Just amazing. I just love helicopters. Had tears in my eyes over the snow fields. Just excruciatingly pretty.

And finally - we get "dumped" at the sawmill - our 'home' for the next 6 weeks. Surrounded by snow-capped mountains, with some more gentle hills nearby. We are so, so lucky!

So - our challenges. Pretty nervous - just how hard are they going to be?! Jonathan - a metal detector!? Now that's hard! Me and Mike L - an accurate balance, to weigh the kilos of gold Mike B and Ellen are going to collect.

A weighing balance … it seems very straightforward. Mike L seemed a little disgusted - it's just too easy, and not dramatic enough. He thought we'd be able to do it in a day.

BUT - making one that can weigh the amounts of gold M + E can get - I think is pretty hard. Mike B thinks they're going to get 5 - 20g. I can't believe that. I'd be thrilled to bits - but there's NO WAY. So - We decided we needed to make a balance that could measure 5 - 20g - but could also weigh things of past 10 - 100 mg.

We messed about with a metal rod - a balance arm. It worked fine for 20g kinds of weights - but wasn't so hot for ½ kg. And it needed to work for ½ kg - since that's the only weight we actually have that we know is a particular weight. It's a 500g bag of sugar. And if we can't weigh that accurately none of our weights will be accurate.

Mike knocked up another balance using a razor blade as a pivot, but it still wasn't any good for 500g. Then we talked about using a length of tube - fill it with sugar and the height would relate to the mass of sugar. I was a bit less excited about this - the sugar probably packs differently when wet and the amount you push it down the tube will affect the height. BUT - if we could start with sugar - then say compare it with water - that might work. And water has a density we know - 1 gram per cubic centimetre. (If only we had some known volumes - eg, if 5 cm3 - we could just do it all based on water. Sigh!

Anyway - I had a very cold, sad end-of-day. I counted the number of nails in a big bag that balanced against the sugar (12,081) and went off thinking we must be able to do better than sugar tubes.

Day 7 - Accurate Weighing Balance
Lovely, peaceful day … pottering about in old sawmill.

Changed from metal balance to a wooden one … it's so much better. It's so long - the errors will be much smaller. I've been able to write the lengths on it directly. And it doesn't bend with the weight of the 500g sugar bag - so I can use reasonable distances from the pivot point - and still get the bag balanced.

Don't think we need to check it in Mike's sugar tube method … this will be so much more accurate. It was good … woke about half hour before alarm went off. A fine time of day to be creative. Mike was carted off to the river to help. I was very happy finishing challenge off. With my new balance - I compared 500g of sugar in some nails (yes … the nails I painstakingly counted yesterday). So - I was able to work out exactly how much each nail should weigh (on average).

So then I took 10 nails to find how long a piece of wire I needed to balance against them. It was like a dream … 10 nails were 3850 mg … which needed 154 cm wire to balance, so 1 mg wire = 154 cm over 3850 and 10 mg wire would be 1540 over 3850 - which is EXACTLY 0.4 cm. Seemed pure fluke that it comes out so exact. But more possibly is a particular mass per just length (ie, 2.5 g/m in this case!). Very excited

Nice way to finish off day … feeling in control - and that a very good balance would be possible.. But I have completely surprised myself. I hate worrying about detailed nonsense. Hate having to check, recheck, check again . I know you often have to be as a security measure but I always make sure I look at areas where attention to detail isn't necessary. It's NOT my strength. Give me big picture any day (and EVERY day).

But - I have loved doing this. I guess 3 days in a lifetime isn't too much commitment but it's been a delight!

Day 8 - Accurate Weighing Balance
Began today with a bizarre dream … I was in a boat, deep sea fishing. I caught a BIG shark that I refused to let go … but it was so strong it whipped me out of the boat, into the sea, and dragged me - via the fishing line and rod - through the ocean. It was quite a nice feeling - exciting. Fast and quite warm. But clearly quite scary too. I woke thinking I should really perhaps let go of the line - but where would that leave me? At least this way - I knew the shark was in front!

Wonder if this is partly a picture of what happens here. Once we're here there's NO advice. We're following a 6 week course. We don't know how hard it will be - only that it will be hard. And you mustn't let go!

But a fab day. Well … quite fab. Spent morning at river helping Mike and Ellen. Rained relentlessly. Cold. HARD work. I seem to have a bad back after over-zealous jogging and 27 hour journey to NZ. So digging heavy piles of rock; lifting buckets of water and pouring and pushing and sawing and carrying … was hard and painful. And Mike and Ellen have done this for 2 days already! Poor, poor things!

Had a go at panning… and got NOTHING. Such a huge faith thing … will there be ANY gold trapped in the punga wood. A very welcome lunch of venison burger and vegetable Moroccan pie. Got v.v. cold - only in t-shirt and wet - un-waterproof - Gore-Tex … warm clothes in van but the van is off in some other place. Didn't want to whinge - but so, so, so cold.

Back to the sawmill. I had to get back to finishing balance. Began getting quite nervous as we approached the time for weighing … Finally got the gold … (NOT 5g or 20g! Or even a kg!) …And, tensely, I found it to be 0.55g - probably realistically 0.52 - 0.58 (or REALLY 0.4 - 0.6g). Kate measured it as 0.5g!

And I was MIND blown by J's metal detector. Great challenge!