Gold was reported to have been found at Boolooroo, about
sixteen kilometres from Copley, in 1920 and the rush was on again. When Bill Kittel, his wife Maud and their nine children arrived on the field in 1920, they found about twenty-five people already living there. Most of these families lived in dugout type of houses, with brush verandahs for shade to avoid the extreme summer heat. Life was very hard on this field. Once a week the women had to walk more than a kilometre with all the family's washing to a nearby spring in the hope of cleaning and drying it before the return trip was undertaken, in time to prepare the family's evening meal on an open fire.
Once a week, after fossicking all day, the men too would go off in the hope of obtaining fresh meat. If they were lucky and shot a rabbit or kangaroo,
it had to be prepared that same night, for fear of "going off". The Kittel family were moderately successful. Kittel and his sons Arthur and Ray found a nugget weighing half an ounce, which was enough to make everybody work harder and for newcomers to arrive by day and night, pitching tents or making little dugouts into the sides of the hill. Vern Kittel, at only twelve years of age found a two ounce nugget.
The biggest nugget found on the field weighed fourteen ounces. As most of the gold was traded for food such as flour, salt, sugar, boiled sweets, tobacco and cans of luxuries, like sardines, it is difficult to work out a total figure for the gold found on this field, as it was for others. When the alluvial gold had petered out the Kittel family left, as did all the other diggers, and settled in Port Augusta. These diggers, some of whom were only part-timers, did exactly what their counterparts had done in the Northern Territory, Queensland and later in Western Australia, where the goldrushes were still on in earnest. They kept an ear to the ground and followed up any and every rumour of a new find - First come, first find! Unfortunately, only very few found anything at all. Most left as they had come - with their picks and shovels. Some did not even manage that!
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