Finds and Discoveries in HK

Submitted by Craig on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 12:34

I thought I’d start up a new forum dedicated to “Finds & Discovery’s in HK”. For anything people have found laying around. 

I’ll start with the story of my mother, who still lives here in HK.

Last summer she was out shopping, surprisingly enough, and looked down to find a ladies watch on the street. She picked it up threw it into her back and reported it to the Police the following day. When my Mum returned from her summer holiday back in the UK there was a message waiting for her from the Old Bill saying nobody has claimed for the watch and so it is rightfully hers. A few days later she goes to collect it and then enquires into its authenticity. She goes into the brands showroom hands the watch over, 5mins later the bloke comes out and says:

“It an original, White Gold with Diamonds, One year old worth……..$118,000!!”

After my mum regained consciousness, she went back to the Coppers to get a letter to say it is legally hers. Not a bad find. Only in HK would someone loose a watch of that value and not even bother to report it. 

Anyway to my finds. I had a quick sweep along the Wong Nai Chung trail with my metal detector and found a few goodies.

I believe they are Japanese bullets, I have tried to identify them as best I can but I’m no expert. I found the rifle heads right outside JL01 and the pistol bullet about 300m from the petrol station. I also found plenty of bits of metal that could well be shrapnel but I just can’t tell.

W.N.C. trail finds

I was out detecting at Wong Nai Chung gap yesterday. I didn't find much, but I ran into Philip Cracknell at the Black Hole and I spoke to him about detecting.

He says that sometimes, he or his friends would find buttons, rounds, bayonets, full set of buckles etc all in one location, but no human remains. He believes that these are the final resting places of fallen men, but all biological remains have rotten away, including their bones.

I never explicitly asked him about the bones in the gulley, but knowing that I would say that they are likely not soldiers' remains. My best guess would be some sort of animal. There's lots of boars there (I saw two yesterday at the barbecue spot), wouldn't be too unlikely.

Went on a hike in the bridge hill/sugarloaf hill area yesterday. Could anyone help with the identification of the finds? the smaller casing is .25 REM and the bullets seem to be .303, but I'm not sure about the rest (especially the bigger one)

Finds on Bridge Hill
Finds on Bridge Hill, by hnollet

 

 
I'd just like to warn hnollet that he has a live Japanese 25mm AA round in his possession! It's a high explosive round containing TNT or Tetryl and the impact fuse has quite a large gain ( detonator) in it. I see that he has already attempted to clean it up but any miss-handling could cause serious injury or worse. This type of item is extremely dangerous.
 There is enough advice in the earlier posts warning about the dangers of Ordinance still lying around on our hills.  It's good advice and un-informed searches / detecting is potentially 'unhealthy'!  I cannot give you any advice as to what to do now but it's not a keeper.

 

I’m obsessed with ww2 history and I’ve always  wanted to try relic hunting. How can I identify ww2 battlefields in Hong Kong. Ive searched up some aerial maps but I couldn’t identify any. 

I am interested too.  Let me know if you get any good tips. I would like to bring a metal detector.

If you had found a Japanese AA shell, then it is  most likely that you are standing near the location of a former Japanese AA Battery. There might be tunnels or earthworks that you can find.