General News
18 May, 2026
Fall’s gold! Beacon gets police visit
A SELF-CONFESSED adventure seeker, fix-it man and occasional gold detectorist has been given a ride in the back of a police van after accidentally setting off his distress beacon.
A SELF-CONFESSED adventure seeker, fix-it man and occasional gold detectorist has been given a ride in the back of a police van after accidentally setting off his distress beacon.
Tony van Baalen was camped at Waanyarra when he fell in a dry creek bed while hunting for gold.
Little more than 300 metres from camp, Tony had the beacon in his back pocket.
““I had climbed over a log fell in the creek and set the beacon off without knowing,” Tony said last week.
“There was no mobile reception ... I was getting all these notifications but couldn’t open messages or make calls.
“I started walking back to camp after stopping to take a drink of water and then suddenly it dawned on me that the beacon may have been set off.
“Next thing I see a police car in the scrub. They call out - are you Tony, I said yes and they popped me in the back of the van for a short trip back to my van.”
Tony said the beacon alert had raised concerns with family and friends and the first calls he made were to his son and daughter.
“Shows the beacon works. A signal was sent off and alerted emergency services and they had to check up on me,” he said.
Tony said he never left camp without the beacon, purchased six years ago after being in Western Australia and “not having a soul within hundreds of kilometres”.
The former mechanic and welder - he travels with some work gear in his van travelling Australia - recounted that adventure that convinced him a beacon had to be part of his adventure gear.
“Was wandering around in the West, walking over rocks when one of my legs went through a crack. I thought, there could be a snake or anyone below. I finally got out and made my way back to the vehicle,” he said.
Tony started sharing the story of his Waanyarra adventure with friends, including Moliagul property owner Ken King.
“Only met Ken once - we were on a Variety Bash together a few years ago,” he said,
“Ken and a heap of others have been more than keen to share my latest exploits.
“But there’s a serious side to what happened and it just goes to show the few hundred dollars I spent was worth every bit of the price. They work that’s for sure.”
Personal locator beacon are a no-subscription emergency device for bushwalking and other other activities, sending a direct SOS signal to rescue services via satellite. Users can register their beacons with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
They can also be used by farmers in areas with poor mobile phone connectivity.
Tony has now moved on from Waanyarra after more than a week at the camp ground.
“I’ve got a few handyman jobs to get done for people,”
He was among dozens of detectorists in the area before the break in weather. “They’ve got much better detectors than me. All I found was heaps of old tin,” Tony said.
“And besides, there’ve been thousands of people go over this area before me,”
And the adventurer’s back-up activities: he travels with two kayaks for water exploration.
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