Phone Lost in Russell, Found in Dense Scrub
Jimmy contacted me as his houseguest had lost his phone in some scrub near Russell.
He had been helping him clear invasive trees from a steep and very overgrown hillside, with his phone ‘safe’ in a leg pocket, secured by a hefty press-stud.
At some stage in his wanderings and stumblings through the dense undergrowth, the press stud on the pocket had been caught and come undone – The phone likely found its way out shortly after. « Murphys Law » came into play with zero reception, so his attempts to ring or otherwise locate the phone were futile.
The going was very tough with a large coil, negotiating the many trees lying where they had fallen, in places the branches meant I couldn’t get closer than a metre or more to the ground surface so I focussed on clearing the more accessible areas with the big coil and the machine running in full sensitivity for the merest whisps of a signal. Constant impacts from branches and vegetation, coupled with the mineralisation of the ground made the machine extremely « chatty ». It took all my focus to decipher the barrage of sounds, whilst trying to stay upright negotiating the steep slippery ground, fallen branches and trunks.
I was already planning on how I would go about searching the area with the small 6″ coil on a special wireless rig I custom made for such scenarios, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t looking forward to the many potential hours this recovery might take. However it was a tightly defined – albeit extremely difficult,and relatively large – area, so I knew it was just a matter of getting a coil close enough to pick up the missing phone.
I worked my way through the gorse and scrub, and in one area where several trees had been felled, I got a faint, but repetitive signal coming from under a trunk.
Placing the machine down, I slipped my arm in through the tangle of branches and stretched my fingers out under the fallen trunk.
It was with great satisfaction that I felt my hand close around a shape and glassy texture definitely not encountered in nature. After facing a potentially very slow and intricate search across the hillside, I was possibly more relieved than the owner!
