Here at Heiman Habitat we’re accustomed to using metal detectors … Nowadays, it’s mainly to find lost arrows on the archery range. Previously though, it was another story …
Once upon a time, in a decade far-far away, we used detectors to find mines and booby traps. You see back in that 80’s, 90’s and early naughties, the dark art of BTs and mine warfare was reserved to those of us in the Australian Army from either the SAS, Ginger Beers or the all-mighty RAInf Assault Pioneers.
However, with that world almost a distant memory, recently we were enthused by an old mate’s prospecting efforts down in the Victorian Colony. Namely, with his find of an 1862 gold Half Sovereign! At first, some coin dealing shonkies tried to talk him out of it for a measly $300. But the decent people at Edlins gave him the Good Oil and suggested he place the item in one of their auctions. $4K later, and everyone was happy. Edlins took their cut and - with what remained – old mate split it in half: between himself and a donation to an Equine PTSD therapy centre.
So, with this new found knowledge - and the fact that old mate was in town - we decided to put our Old School skills to the test.
Now, every day spent in the bush (and not in the city) is a good one, so we’d decided to go for a look along a local river we know. That way, we could have a good time walking in the scrub looking (hoping) to find GOLD – and if that didn’t work, well: we were in a prime location for a swim and a spot of fishing.
To paraphrase George Thorogood: gold can ‘make a rich woman beg, or a good woman steal, it can make an old woman blush or a young woman squeal’. With a bit of luck, maybe we could have an ingot between our teeth and a spring in our heels before the day was through…
Regrettably, the intervention of city slickers (what I like to call ‘homo urbanensis’) was destined to stand between us and our fantasy. Because, while the detector was happy to squeal with anticipation every five minutes or so, all we found were bottle tops and fishing waste – and all we started to feel was a rising irritation at the evident lack of regard for nature revealed by the metallic trash hidden in the dirt we found ourselves picking over.
Now, while I’m grudgingly prepared to accept that around parking bays and picnic spots it’s inevitable to find a bit of litter. Troglodytes of our species tend to favour such places, leaving their primitive mark in broken bottles, takeaway wrappers, graffiti and associated vandalism. So, we weren’t too surprised to find fire pits created in ‘No Fire’ areas, park benches burnt to the ground, people fishing in ‘No Fishing’ areas, and human waste left on open ground without the slightest effort of burial: the list goes on.
But much of our day was spent on a relatively remote stretch of river which I’d have hoped to be out of reach of such idiots. In the areas we were exploring, we’d thought that the only refuse we might find would be rusty and historic, marking where some bygone misinformed ancestor had intervened momentarily with the flow of nature. So, what we couldn’t fathom was why we were looking at brand new beer bottles discarded on a pristine shore, nearly a kilometre from the nearest car park. Looking around, the same site was also liberally strewn with mango peel no more than a day old. The makeshift rod holder stuck in the sand at the water line indicated that this individual seemed to ‘tune in with nature’.
I really had to ask myself. Why bother getting out of the car and actively venturing into nature only to pollute the very place you’ve come to enjoy? This was no accident, or act of some teenager intent on social rebellion. It was clearly a case of pure, unadulterated and active disregard for the surroundings.
On the drive home, I found myself reflecting on that George Thorogood song I’d started humming on the way to the river. ‘Bad to the Bone’. I wondered: as a species: are we? B-B-B Bad?
It’ll be ‘more than a thousand hearts broken’ if we are.
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