From the Outback to the Jungle: Victorian Relic Hunt.

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Well, good day everyone. It's Warren and Colleen from ENQ Explorers. Uh we're on a little two-day odyssey here. We're visiting several uh sites we've researched and uh we're going to try to get a video made um at these old house sites. Some of which are on uh old abandoned railway lines. Some are uh old sightings that aren't there anymore.

[00:00:22]That kind of thing. So, we're at the first site of the morning. Um few flies buzzing around. That's all right. It's going to be nice and hot today. It's going to be 37°. So, uh we've got plenty of water. We'll try to uh get it all done before lunchtime. But anyway, uh I've got my first find down here on the uh with the detector um on the uh track down here where there was an old railway house. Um I haven't exactly located it on the ground in the field. Uh but I do have aerial photographs showing where it was in the 1950s. Let's go and look at this find. Here's our first find that Collins just spotted. It's a bottle. We haven't even turned the machines on. Oh, well, we have, but we haven't dug anything up.

[00:01:03]Uh, this has been pushed up. You can see it's pretty lomy country we're in.

[00:01:09]>> Oh, it's a nice That's an ENO bottle, isn't it, Colin?

[00:01:12]>> Yeah, it looks like it.

[00:01:15]>> Little Eno bottle.

[00:01:20]Well, this house was demolished in the late 50s, so that's a fairly typical 1950s Xeno bottle, I'd say. Nice.

[00:01:29]So, today we're both using Garrett Apex.

[00:01:31]We're running in multi-frequency mode.

[00:01:33]I've got the larger uh coil there on there, the Raider coil, 11 12 in, and Colleen's running the standard Viper.

[00:01:42]Um, and here's what we find on this bit of a track here.

[00:01:46]It's an old fourhole button. That's definitely 19th century or at least uh into the 1910s and 20s perhaps. Doesn't look to be branded.

[00:01:55]Not a railway button, but that's probably a personal shirt button. Okay, we've been here about uh 30 minutes.

[00:02:02]Other than the button, I haven't got anything reportable. Colin's been picking up some dogs bikes down by the railway track cuz there was an old sighting there. Um so down in this area, I believe is where the house was.

[00:02:16]Now, there should be a corner in the fence line there, but there isn't where the railway easement uh boundary is.

[00:02:25]So, I I I believe I'm in the vicinity here, but there's a bit of glass in the ground here in ceramic, but as you can see, this has been uh pushed. There's probably relics in that windray, probably a treasure trove in there. But anyway, over in here on our left, there's a rubbish pit. So, I'm thinking the house was here somewhere.

[00:02:49]Um, would have been on timber stumps.

[00:02:52]Often they're left behind, but not in this case. They're gone or the white ants ate them. We got a few drums laying around. Uh, there was a little of a milk churn back there. I didn't show you. Oh, railway milk churn. And amongst these boulders, these granite boulders, we've got a rubbish pit. So, that's a domestic rubbish pit.

[00:03:15]Someone's had a bit of a poke in there by the look of it.

[00:03:18]I think this granite's dumped here. It looks like it's been blasted and dropped from the train over here. You can see where there's uh they've uh drilled it.

[00:03:29]Well, here you can too.

[00:03:31]That's been drilled.

[00:03:34]And this one in particular and split.

[00:03:36]Oh, he's a bottle. Look.

[00:03:39]Haven't spot that before.

[00:03:41]Busted.

[00:03:43]An old milk bottle.

[00:03:46]Imperial point. Huh? An old onepoint milk bottle.

[00:03:51]Look at that. What a shame. It's got a hole in it.

[00:03:57]Any dates? No. Might put that in the pocket, eh? Anyway, as you can see, that's been blasted or drilled at least and and cracked. Solid, beautiful granite.

[00:04:09]Bits of iron.

[00:04:12]No exotic tree. So, not like a a mango tree or a orange or a lemon. But along this wind row here, I spotted something was interesting.

[00:04:24]It was just sticking out of the soil when I was walking along. Just got to point it again.

[00:04:31]Um, oh, here it is. I just bumped it with the detector. It's obviously been pushed up there with the tractor or something. An old set of air clippers.

[00:04:39]Look at that.

[00:04:42]be pretty ruffled haircut now, wouldn't it?

[00:04:46]That's a ripper of that one. So, yeah, I'd say there's stuff in the sprinter.

[00:04:49]There's definitely glass fragments and that kind of stuff.

[00:04:53]I I still tend to think there's your rubbish pit.

[00:04:57]I think the house was here based on the aerial photographs, but this is only a first trip in, and this is often what happens. take uh two or sometimes three attempts to really read a site uh from the field evidence rather than the aerial photographs or maps. There's Collins down there heading down the track towards me. Well, we might give this another hour here and move on to our next site.

[00:05:22]Got a 6872 in this uh lump of clay. So, let's bust it open together and see what we got.

[00:05:30]Let's have a look here. Okay, Apex, we'll bring you around here so we can check the target on the coil.

[00:05:41]Oh, it fell out straight away.

[00:05:46]That's a lead seal. That'll be a railway seal.

[00:05:51]Bag seal. Oh, look at that.

[00:05:55]Of a bale, a bale seal or something. Uh 272 looks like definitely a bag or bail seal. Well, this is an interesting situation here. From that little hole in the old roots which been pushed came these. Now, if these were brass, I'd say they're World War II webbing buckles, but they're not brass. They're stainless, I'm pretty sure. So, here we go. We got a um I'd say it's someone's braces.

[00:06:24]There's the end piece off the strap. End piece off the strap. and the two tightening buckles. Now, the army weren't running around with bright silver buckles. So, that's definitely the army pattern though, so maybe it was some sort of civilian uh casting that was done after the war to a military pattern. I'm not sure, but they're definitely braces or suspenders that they'd be known in the United States.

[00:06:47]Okay, just got another target. Another bale seal. Typical what you get along a railway, an abandoned railway sighting.

[00:06:52]Uh saw a number. Oh, there it is. 11 niner.

[00:07:00]Today we're on a ghost town adventure.

[00:07:02]As you can see, it's an overgrown jungle clad site, which is uh always a challenge, but a lot of fun when you find uh targets in here. It's a very rewarding place to detect once you're picking up uh a few top pocket finds, which we hope we get today. Um, I'll tell you a bit about the history of this place uh further into the video once we made some finds, but suffice to say, it dates from the 1880s, the early 1880s, and it was all gone by 1900. Uh, it was a sawmill. Uh, there were workers houses, and there was a school here. So, uh, it was basically a logging town, um, for cedar, redwood, that kind of thing.

[00:07:40]So, uh, very valuable timber. Lots of, uh, valuable timber came through this town back in the 1880s. And it was sent out by sea uh south to Brisbane and Sydney and Melbourne of course for construction because uh that was the uh the trees the cedars in these forests were uh like gold back in the 1800s.

[00:08:00]They were very much sought after as they are today. Um you won't find many big feeders he left in here. But anyway um that's where we are. 1880s ghost town.

[00:08:09]Let's make a few finds and then we'll have a little bit of a talk about the place.

[00:08:14]Okay, we're on site. Colleen's just reported a find over here in the jungle.

[00:08:21]Little bit of a clearing here where we can actually swing the coil. It's uh not easy, but it's doable.

[00:08:30]What we got?

[00:08:32]Shotgun.

[00:08:35]>> Yep. 12 gauge shotgun. That'll be old.

[00:08:37]>> 12 gauge. Yeah, it says 12.

[00:08:39]>> Would it be an Eloy or London or something?

[00:08:42]>> Can't quite read that. I can see the 12.

[00:08:44]>> Yep. No, that's definitely >> I don't think it's Eli.

[00:08:48]Maybe you better have a look. But um yeah, but it was down quite deep. I mean, right down the bottom there.

[00:08:55]That's probably 10 12 in.

[00:08:57]>> Yeah, I'm finding all the targets are really deep in this. It's sandy lom >> and they sink right down. Can I please put my son here so you can see it? Can you read it?

[00:09:07]>> Oh, that's quality brass. So, it's obviously 1800s. Yeah, that'll be 1880s, 1890s. Sort of a medium base 12 gauge.

[00:09:16]>> Yeah.

[00:09:16]>> Yeah, that's a good find. And it's a good uh deep target. What was your target ID?

[00:09:21]>> Oh, well, jumping.

[00:09:22]>> I think it was Yeah, it was jumping cuz there's a fair bit of iron in here as well.

[00:09:26]>> Yeah.

[00:09:26]>> But um yeah, 68s, >> right?

[00:09:29]>> You know, up to 72s and >> so we're actually both running uh zero discrimination and I'm just digging everything repeatable above 30. So, I am getting old square nails and things, but because of the depth of the targets, any detector is going to struggle with a a proper target ID, an accurate target ID, uh, until you get much closer to the, uh, actual item. So, >> yeah, when you're looking at 10-in digs, um, you're not going to get a really good reliable target ID from the surface necessarily. You may, depends on the angle of the target, but that'll definitely improve as you take some soil off. So, nice work on the 12 gauge.

[00:10:07]>> Yeah. So, a little of the history of this town we're in today. It was founded in the early 1880s as a river port.

[00:10:13]There were no roads and no railways uh into this area in the 1880s. So, the ocean steamages to come up the river and load cedar here from the sawmill. It was brought in by jinkers and bulock teams from the mountains down to the river here out to sea and ports north and south.

[00:10:34]Now in the 1890s the uh railway came through about 15 miles in the old money to the west. So that was pretty much the end of the uh riverport town because the railway bisected the jinker routes from the mountains where the cedar was coming down. So actually it was a shorter hall to the railway and the railway took all the business uh all the timber the log timber unsawn timber um south and north and of course a sawmill was established at the rail head. So this sawmill was abandoned the machinery was moved elsewhere to other mills as that areas got cut out. That's what usually happened. The infrastructure left is quite a bit of iron we're hearing in the ground. Iron strapping, cast iron, really old cast iron, no steel, and very old bricks, clay bricks. Um, the timber houses would have been on stumps and were company houses and would have been removed uh when the town was abandoned. And actually, there was a school further into the bush. We haven't been there yet. We'll do a video in there one day. Um, and the school would have been moved, too, because there was no population to serve. kids are all gone. So, you know, you're looking at 15 years of existence of this town. Very busy at the time. Uh, no established roads from the south, but they came in from the west from the mountains with for the timber jankers. And of course, everything came in by barge and ocean steamer to the riverport, which was just out here. So, uh, what was really interesting about this though, and something I'd love to find in here, and I haven't yet, would be a company token because the place was so remote. Uh the employees were paid in company money which is a fairly rare thing for this part of Queensland um or anywhere in Australia really. Most places used uh you know the state and national currency at the time pound shillings pence but here because it was so isolated and there was no the coinage wasn't available this far remote the company uh minted its own coins and they paid the uh employees in their money and of course they spent that money at the company's store which was very profitable for the company but apparently it was it was quite a good place to live. was uh quite a benevolent a um magnate who built it and looked after his employees really well. But anyway, that's the story of the town. Uh the railway is what actually killed it.

[00:12:58]And they removed all the infrastructure and the houses and uh further to the west onto the rail head.

[00:13:07]Another reportable find.

[00:13:11]Studying it intensely there.

[00:13:15]We got radios in here, but we don't want to get too far apart because it's just a trackless jungle.

[00:13:20]What's this one?

[00:13:22]>> It's a nice old signal, you know, like 84, but it's another brass shotgun.

[00:13:27]>> Nice.

[00:13:28]>> Yeah.

[00:13:29]>> No, they're definitely period.

[00:13:30]>> Yeah, they did. They're down under roots, so they're definitely been there for quite some time.

[00:13:36]>> Nice one.

[00:13:36]>> Yeah.

[00:13:38]>> So, we're both running Garrett Vortex VX9s today and both in zero. We just want to dig everything repeatable.

[00:13:44]Hence, I'm going to get things like this, which is pretty awesome, actually.

[00:13:47]Beautiful old machinery part. Probably from the sawmill.

[00:13:52]That's It's iron, not steel. It's an old iron part of a bit of machinery or something, I guess.

[00:14:01]Heavily corroded. Well, it's been here 140 years.

[00:14:06]Town's been long abandoned. So that's possibly that's possibly a uh machinery part from the sawmill which is just in there. We're not really in the residential area yet, but that's further over to camera right.

[00:14:22]Okay, we're walking back to another find. Actually, Colleen hasn't moved for about 20 minutes. That's all these little repeatables she's getting there.

[00:14:32]You're in the same spot. Was that the same hole as this last shotgun shelf?

[00:14:35]>> It is. Yeah, same hole. I've never seen it before. That's all. I'm wondering what it is. It's a little Looks like it's a little brass something, but it's seems to have a little hole at the there. Is it the screw went in it or?

[00:14:48]>> Oh, hang on. Is it not the end of a skeleton key, is it?

[00:14:51]>> Oh, is it?

[00:14:51]>> Is that a little flange on there? I think >> Yeah, it could be.

[00:14:55]>> I think it's the end of a skeleton key.

[00:14:57]Like the the business end.

[00:14:59]>> Well, actually is what it looks like.

[00:15:02]That's what those little like a like a little draw key or a >> Does it look like there's something >> inside the ch >> on the ends? Some sort of uh >> I can't see with the camera.

[00:15:11]>> We'll study that when we get out of the uh doubled light and see if we can identify what that is.

[00:15:16]>> It's just a good signal.

[00:15:17]>> Yeah. Good little repeatable.

[00:15:18]>> Yeah.

[00:15:19]>> And good depth. Look, I mean, she's down amongst the roots. So, that's >> that's right underneath.

[00:15:23]>> Yeah. As you can see here, we got old brick. 1800s brick. Would have been a machinery foundation of some such. Back over in here are a couple of uh pits, large pits which were domestic pits. Uh the sawmills in this direction and the wolves. But uh I just made a nice little find over here. Let's go have a look at it.

[00:15:43]It's a really pretty spot to detect.

[00:15:44]There's beautiful fan palms in there.

[00:15:46]Although they're pretty prickly if you get up close to them.

[00:15:49]Fan pump. Uh anyway, I've got a uh the lead top of a roofing nail there. So there's a structure of some description here with corrugated ir roofing. And right next to it, very deep, 8 to 9 in.

[00:16:01]It's just a sand. Uh, but we're finding that the targets are very deep in this site all over. It's a matter of scrubbing the coil on the ground. I've got my uh Garrett Vortex VX9 with a Viper coil, which is a uh that's the accessory coil, not the standard coil.

[00:16:16]And I just got a 19th century button.

[00:16:19]Doesn't look to be branded.

[00:16:22]That's definitely from the period of the old ghost town. come and drift some some oldtimer shirt working in the mill or uh heading home for dinner in this forest which of course was pretty much clear felled in 1880. This is all regrowth since that time. I'm still working this little spot where I got the roofing nail head, the bit of lead and the four hole button. Then I just dug this out.

[00:16:53]I can get it in the same light. The double lights a bit difficult. Look at this beautiful little two-hole button.

[00:16:58]It's still got a lot of silvering on the back or the front. I don't know if it's branded.

[00:17:03]Bit diffult oneanded here. We'll just flip it over.

[00:17:07]Uh there may be some pattern on there.

[00:17:09]Gee, that'll be worth uh I'll do a close-up shot of that so you can see what that is. But just the little two-hole button was not a high target ID. I think it was in the 50s. Bit hard to tell because the stuff's so deep. Uh and you don't get a consistent target ID from the surface.

[00:17:25]It's more pinpointing at depth in the sand, but that's a uh a lot of silvering on there or whatever that is. Um once I clean it up, we'll might be able to work out if there's any writing or a maker's name. That's a rip of that one.