Hole Digging Etiquette

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We have now been out to the back of Oberon a couple of times on multi day trips and are learning heaps, thanks to the generosity of others out there. And I can happily report we have found a couple of small sapphires - along with a ton of quartz! Enough colour to have us hooked.
One thing we have not been able to determine is what the etiquette is relating to existing holes, especially those outside the public fossicking areas. We came across a couple of large holes in the Vulcan State Forest that were perhaps only a day or so old. Each one of them would have required a huge effort to dig in order to get down to the wash. If no one is on site is it acceptable to continue work on the hole? Clearly the older, overgrown holes are up for grabs but what about fresher earthworks?
 
Hole digging etiquette = fill 'em back in before you leave.
They should have been filled in anyway if nobody is still on site.
I'd say go for it but keep in mind if the State Forest rangers come along & you're scratching around in the holes their expectation might be that you are responsible for them & as such fill them back in?
 
Hey mate.
Ive spent plenty of time in the Vulcan, its really a shame how bad its become.
If nobody is in a hole, I wouldnt worry too much about upsetting people for getting into it.
One thing I would say as a friendly tidbit, if you go into another hole, dont just dig all the wash out and leave a big overhang, not only does it make it sketchy, it also means a lot of work for the next fella giving it a shot.
Good luck, Im hoping to be out there with a mate of mine this weekend coming.
 
Like a Pokie Machine, Leave your chair up against the Machine.... Leave 'something' in the hole.... No 'something' in the hole ... Go for it... :)
If We left every ones hole alone and dug our own, imaging how the place would look after a Year or two...

LW....
 
To me, it depends on the site. If I came across a site that was peppered in recent holes... it dose take away a respect for the area.
A hole left without a bucket in a tempting spot... yes I would dig it further. Some creeks get good fast flow often, and leave little trace you where ever there after an inch of rain.
And if I was going back to the same hole in a short time, no I wouldn't be tempted to back fill my hole.
If it was a one offf dig, then yes... back fill it.
Stumbling across a very recent hole and digging into it may cause an issue if the original person shows up.
It really is a gentlemans agreement to leave it be when there's a bucket etc.
I would surrender it generally if they showed up and had a winge...
but not for the village idiot at Hargraves...!
Stand your ground to this fool, drives a white 4x4 van.
He will lie to you in his first words to you.
Keep it green, and fill it in.
We don't want the negative backlash of our hobby hey
 
And if I was going back to the same hole in a short time, no I wouldn't be tempted to back fill my hole.

As age 50 gets closer, the amount of effort it takes me to dig a hole by hand in the first place doesn't leave me feeling very excited at the prospect of filling it back in if I intend to go back to the same hole a short time later. It's the definition of a huge wasted effort - finding what you're after and then having to move the exact same mountain of dirt twice more (once to backfill it and then once more to dig it back out again) just to re-expose the productive patch you had already exposed in the first place.

If it's a well-used fossicking area, backfilling also makes it harder to know if you're wasting your time digging ground that has already been dug - in a couple of years a backfilled hole may have become quite difficult to distinguish from un-dug ground beside it. Plenty of times at Lowmead I thought I was digging virgin soil, only to come across some old buried beer cans or something similar. On that note, I do not advocate burying rubbish - take your rubbish away with you. That requires zero effort.

We all have a bit of a green bone in us nowdays but I do feel it can get a bit overstated at times - if an animal digs a hole with it's paws that's natural but if a human digs a hole with a shovel, somehow that hole is unnatural? The tiny birds I've always called Chip-Chip's (Spotted Pardalotes) don't seem to mind the difference and show up on pretty much every dig to take advantage of the exposed earth. As do Butcherbirds, Magpies and Kookaburras, sitting in the trees overhead, waiting for a grub or worm to be exposed. We've even had small dragon lizards follow us around, presumably for the same reason.

Animals and plants don't see a bunch of hand-dug holes as environmental destruction - they see it as opportunity. This has been well documented by practising biologists such as Tim Low. I first heard it stated by the curator of a wildlife park years ago who said to the audience "there is no such thing as balance in nature - it's boom and bust". Even the trees growing beside roads in arid parts of the country tend to be more robust than those growing in the undisturbed environment further away as the spoon drains cause scarce rainfall to collect and soak into the ground in those spots, just like holes.

It's just that public knowledge can often run decades behind scientific understanding if a popular idea holds sway.

But anyway, when in Rome do as the Romans. If the expectation is or the rules say or the property owner says so or you think it might pose a risk then backfill the hole.
 
Backfilling also stops lazy people profiting from your hardwork and knowledge, it also stops fossicking areas from being shut down , i would be very dubious of leaving a hole open in a ranger patroled area as it could mean you are helping it become a "consernation area" in the future.
Any hole i have left open was twice the size when i returned , so that alone stopped me from leaving them open if im not coming back the next day.
 
At Black Springs fossicking area you'd have to dig a big hole just to fill in a hole (crater)...... Some holes have been there a long long time. Anyway yes I agree that all holes should be filled in.

A forum member even showed me a hole there that is more of a shaft, it's about 3 metres deep and had a dead deer in the bottom so yes fill in your holes as poor animals can fall in and suffer a very nasty and lonely death. :(
 
It's got very little or nothing in my case to do with having a green bone or going with the green angle!
It's got everything to do with what the NSW regulations/rules/guidelines state & also the conditions of the NSW State Forests permit. Some just seem to think they don't need to follow them, then others follow after them & think oh well there's open holes here already so I'll just leave mine open too or make that one twice the size. It eventually attracts unwanted/unneeded attention in public areas that then gives those with the green bones weight to their argument that fossicking is destructive & we can't follow rules.
There might be some creeks that wash away any trace we were there after an inch of rain but there are many more that don't or even erode holes out bigger.
Birds flock into my yard after I mow it looking for an easy feed too. I suppose Tim Low will give the nod to mowing down natural grasslands too soon because the birds like it. :rolleyes:
Using floods/rainfall & giving the birds/animals a free feed as excuses for leaving holes open is just that IMO - a poor excuse to not following the rules. Rightly or wrongly they are the rules & they are what we get judged on - probably more so in some areas than others.
Recently I was reading a report from the Management of a well known local publically accessible area that basically said that while fossicking is still an allowed activity they have been notified of and are aware of several issues from the activity which are being reviewed/monitored.
There are numerous unfilled holes there - large & small. If they did close it to fossicking (which I doubt) there would be a huge uproar just on this forum let alone from the wider fossicking community. Shows that our actions, or inactions, do place us under notice for the wrong reasons though :N:
 
It's got very little or nothing in my case to do with having a green bone or going with the green angle!
It's got everything to do with what the NSW regulations/rules/guidelines state & also the conditions of the NSW State Forests permit.

I can only offer my opinion based on my experience, which is in Queensland - each state has it's own legislation, sometimes they differ from one another in the extreme.

On re-reading I note that people seem to refer to fossicking in state forests - this is STRICTLY PROHIBITED in Queensland. It has not been made this way by people digging holes in state forests and not backfilling them - it has never been legal here to my knowledge.

I am referring generally to what the QLD government calls "Designated Fossicking Areas". These areas are wholly or partly owned and overseen by the government for the express purpose of recreational fossicking and in certain cases depending on the area, small scale mining claims. The Anakie/Rubyvale gemfield contains a mix of both plus larger-scale commercial machinery mining.

It could be that the legislation has changed and I'm not up to date but I'm not aware of any requirement to backfill on a purpose designated fossicking area in Queensland. If there is I've never seen it enforced. I'm glad of this because it would make identifying un-worked ground all the more difficult. In some places it's fairly identifiable but in other places even having years of experience may not be much help. If you're just out to enjoy a day out in the bush digging holes then it may not bother you if it turns out that you're wasting your time and energy digging previously worked ground but I prefer not to. Digging is starting to get harder as it is.

Parts of the Anakie field designated fossicking areas are also open for the pegging of small miners claims which are regularly bought and sold - if there was a requirement to backfill and level everything before selling then you would be mad to even consider buying - how would you know how much of the ground has already been worked? (you still need to tidy up, remove all materials and claim pegs if you cancel/hand back a claim). Fair enough, this is probably tangental to the precise issue at hand here.

Birds flock into my yard after I mow it looking for an easy feed too. I suppose Tim Low will give the nod to mowing down natural grasslands too soon because the birds like it. roll

Yes, this is how I felt when I first heard it too at wildlife park in north QLD. However, I eventually came to accept what Rob Bredl, Tim Lowe and other field biologists and professionals have to say on the matter as scientific fact. How do you know the "natural grasslands" are even natural? The tussock flats in New Zealand look natural but they were in fact created by the Maori hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans - the ground still contains many hewn tree stump remains. The vegetation patterns of this country also were already heavily the product of human hand (firestick farming) by the time Europeans arrived.

One example would be the small patch of rainforest conservation area just north of Yepoon a couple of hours drive from where I live. To call it "ancient" would be highly misleading, it's very obvious that it's quite young. Walking through it, it strikes you that the huge emergent trees that are dotted all through it and tower above it are not rainforest species - they are gum trees. All the same species (bloodwoods), all the same size (enormous, far bigger than any of the rainforest species around them) and some of them have hollows lined with charcoal - you don't get fires in rainforests! My guess is that the rainforest species in the area were restricted to stands along protected steep creek banks and steep gullies in the range behind, kept at bay by firestick farming. The Europeans forced the indigenous inhabitants off their land and the non-fire tollerant species had a chance to advance.

I spent a few years doing volunteer work at our local herbarium and accompanying other volunteers and park rangers on surveys in local national parks. I recall a slightly heated debate between one of them main herbarium members and a park ranger - the herbarium member insisted there should never be any burning while the ranger argued that it has been proven necessary to maintain what existed there previously....created by the hand of man.

Things are not always as they seem!

My apologies Pickledeel, I see on more thorough reading that you're referring specifically to NSW. The activity of fossicking in state forests here in QLD has always been strictly illegal and other fossicking legislation and norms will no doubt differ as well. Others will be better placed to answer your questions.

Cheers
 
There are a few state forests that allow fossicking in QLD Lefty... but most have been done over many times.... Clermont(Gold) is one area they are looking at expanding the General Permission areas... And there is a push to expand some State Forests out Warwick(Gems) way as well... Slowly QLD is catching up with the rest of Australia.....

LW....
 

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