Jackpot in Ophir - Josh

From Bathurst we drove to Ophir the first thing I noticed was a rope swing hanging off a big tree over the river. The river looked murky and deep and even though it looked all right to me according to mum there were warnings about leaches... Noooo!

As soon as we unpacked the caravan I could not wait to try the swing but we had to eat lunch first, we had yummy nachos, Raf begged to go to the swinging rope. We got changed into our swimming costumes and ran to the river. Mum and dad had to check the depth first before we could jump in, they said yes. No one wanted to go in so I just went for it! I grabbed the rope, took a swing and jumped...but forgot to put my legs up so i was very slow. After that, I went again and only then Noah wanted to come in, not Raf because he was too scared.

Finally Raf joined us and we had so much fun until Raf got a leach on his leg and slapped it off his leg, I was in the water still so I quickly jumped out. Not to worry we went back a couple of hours later.After swimming in the river we decided to go for a walk.

The walk was all about gold mines, shafts and learning. It was two kilometres long and along the walk there was cave which we went in, some light came through the cave and suddenly a bat flew over us then dad decided we should go back.

Ophir was the first place in Australia where they found payable gold, and this happened in 1851. once we heard that, we decided to go fossicking for gold, so we grabbed a shovel and we made a pan and went to the river.

We asked mum to check the rock we found because we didn't know what gold looked like. Mum showed us her ring and we knew what to look for. When we got back to camp we met two men that were waiting for their friends, we asked if they found gold and they said yes, and he showed us what a gold nugget looked like. He also showed us a metal detector that was easy to handle, how it worked and it was $3600.

After 5 days staying at Ophir we packed and left to Forbes