The builder's plate from the vintage Crossley tourer
Bushland find a missing link for a vintage car project
In April 2008 I took my son Oliver metal-detecting. We'd been to beaches a few times, but this particular weekend we decided to go to bushland near the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond. We chose the spot of a former settlement named "Hollywood" where people built shacks during the Great Depression of the 1930s. There isn't much left of Hollywood now, and I guess when they build the next stage of Highway 23 there will be even less. But I remember stumbling on some old hearthstones, chimneys and fruit trees when I was a kid, and learning…