Treasure Hunt - Jonathan Hare's diary

Production team

Day 25 - Rest Day
Black Sands and Hippy Trails
Pippa, Ellen, Kathy, Kate , Sophie and I go to see Peter, a man who lives on his own on his gold patch by the sea. Peter is a 50-60 year old Hippie and has plans of using his gold prospecting machine he was building to pay for a green community he has been dreaming of. He had a lot of experience gold prospecting in Alaska and other parts of the USA and now lives on the West coast of NZ.

The sand on the beaches here is very dark and very heavy. A bucket of the sand is noticeably heavy. What's more important, and the reason for our trip, is that the sands also contain a lot of gold. The gold is very fine and because the sand is heavy and the gold mixed in, it is very difficult to separate in a cost effective way. Consequently, even though there is a lot of gold, not too many people are actually trying to get the precious stuff out commercially.

Often stormy weather will bring in waves that drop gold in bands (lens shaped) at the tide mark and these are interesting as they have a much greater amount of gold in them. It's like a large natural panning effect accumulating gold. Peter estimates that 2000 tonnes of the sand will yield 2 oz of gold. So you need a system that can plough through a lot of material to make a commercial success of it all.

We spend the morning with Peter and he showed us his previous and latest inventions and was very hospitable.

Day 26 - Rest Day
Got up today after about a sleep of 12 hours! It's a beautiful day and the sun is shining so I get out the gold pan and head up the local river to see what I might find! I walk up the Tarter River, which has its origin in the hills at the back of where we are staying. Didn't find a speck of gold all day but to my delight I had a nice haul of garnets. So you go out looking for gold and find garnets - there's a lesson in life in all this!
This gives me good practice panning and learning how to do it quickly. It was wonderful to go to a bend in the river or just scoop up a pan full of mud from behind a large boulder. You then take this mud in the pan and cover it in water and swirl it around to try and make sure the heavy stuff sinks to the bottom of the pan. Then in a matter of minutes one could quickly pan this down till only a 1/20th was left. As you get rid of the lighter stuff the garnets appear almost from nowhere. It's very, very satisfying and wonderful.

A day in the river, under the sun, lots of fun.

Day 27 - Altimeter

West Coast Treasure
On Cullery Track in the winter rain,
Treasure is what we set out to gain!
On a Punga Island by a large wet log,
We start our search in the gravely bog.
A water u-tube and an estimate best made,
A metal detector, hope and a rusty spade.

Today, Ellen and I were given the treasure challenge - we have to develop an altimeter in order to get information on how to find the gold! Kathy is setting up a sluice to process the black sand and the two Mikes are making mercury and extracting as much gold as they can from the rocks they have accumulated.

Kate gave us a treasure map and told us that a helicopter would take us to a frozen lake about 1000m away where we would get out and have to climb 100m in altitude and find the buried treasure. We could use the metal detector we had made previously to help us.

Later on these instructions were to be changed because of the weather.

Ellen and I spend most of the first day with Kathy digging up the black sand on the amazing west coast beach. Had some fun generally taking it easy and playing around getting all the filming bits and pieces we need. Ellen and I do a spoof Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on the beach but I am not sure if anyone else realised what we were doing! Anyway, we had fun ... such a great place to spend the day.

In the afternoon Ellen and I go up with Steve Evanson to Sentinel Point to see if we can use this hill as a known height to calibrate our altimeter. On the map it looks as if the height from the base to the look-out point is a 40m increase in elevation. End the day with Ellen and I being filmed talking about how the altimeter is going to work. Apparently it was very funny to see (and film).

Day 28 - Altimeter
Last night Mike B had an accident. Saw him this morning and he looked bad. Really shook us all up and I felt like crying. Even though he was obviously not dangerously hurt it reminded me of my uncle's fatal accident and how I had to go and identify him for the police. I think it took a lot out of all of us.

A slow start today. Ellen and I make up a great 'backpacker's' altimeter (the YHA shop will be selling them soon - mark my words!) for the treasure/altitude challenge. But the rain is coming on and it's stopping us going out and using it. Eventually, we get a break in the rain and head out to Sentinel Point again to film the calibration.

The crew, Ellen and I head out to the rough moraine-covered floor of the river bed near to Sentinel Point. Here Ellen and I adjust the device so that it reads zero and then head up to the high point to get the calibration. Once up there we find it has worked but not nearly as much as we had hoped. Our instrument registers only about a 1cm change for the 40m change in altitude. Anyway, it is enough for the challenge and as we have a greater change in height to measure (about 80m), it looks promising.

Day 29 - Altimeter
Ellen and I have a very easy morning, as the weather is so atrocious! No helicopters are going to run in this weather and so the plans will have to be changed. They film us looking at the rain pouring down and give us new instructions. Chris, the New Zealand guide, is going to take us up to the start of the mountain track. From there we have to ascend 80m in altitude where we will find a Punga Island on which, by a wet log, we will find the treasure!

It was pouring down when Chris, Ellen and I head off to look for treasure. The mountain streams were high due to the immense amount of water flowing from the hills and you could almost see them rising. As we had to cross a few of these by foot we were all a little anxious! Chris took us to the start of the mountain track and then left it to us to lead the way and navigate the trail using our altimeter. Before heading up Ellen and I reset the altimeter so that it read zero at that level and then we headed up the track. At about the 40m mark Ellen stopped and we asked Chris to check on his professional altimeter. He read the dial but declined to tell us how it checked out!

By about 50m we had arrived at a mountain river forming a gorge heading upwards. We followed the riverbank, sometimes having to cross the bubbling stream in order to find a dry place to walk. At about 80m there was a clearing and we could see that the river split into two at this point and this formed an island in the middle - an island covered in Punga trees!

We crossed over to the island and started to look around. We soon came across a clearing next to which was a large wet log brought there from high up by previous floods. Ellen and I were asked to wait while Chris went over to investigate. To our surprise he shouted out for us to stay away. A few minutes later we were asked to proceed and Ellen and I came to the clearing. We started to survey the area using the metal detector. After about 5 minutes we got a strong signal from the detector. Ellen used the shovel and soon we had a small metal box - our treasure found - but it was locked!!

Why had Chris asked us to wait? Well, previously he had hidden the treasure in the mud of the bank but on his arrival with us to the site he found that it had moved. In fact, it was no longer covered at all and was in a completely different position to that where he had hidden it! What must have happened is that the rapidly rising waters must have caused the river to burst its banks and uncovered the box - but luckily not swept away our treasure!! Chris had asked us to wait because he needed to re-bury the treasure for us to find.

Ellen and I dug up the box and found it was locked! She was so disappointed she wanted to tear the lock off but we convinced her that it might be needed for the final scene so we carefully packed it away and headed off down the mountain.