Where to Go

Don’t trust solely to luck, do a little research.  Find the old timer’s diggings and start from there. If you are really fortunate, maybe you know an experienced person who can take you to a good area.

1. Tap the brains of the dealer who sells you your detector. No one will exactly pinpoint a rich spot, or they would have cleaned it out themselves.

2. Do your best to get to know the locals of a gold town or area. Don’t ask too many questions, or they will clam up, but listen for the bits of info they may drop from time-to-time.

3. Phone or visit or write to the nearest State Dept. of Minerals and Dept. of Mines. They will advise or provide maps and explain how you can legally detect in an area.  Some of the gold-bearing land will be under claim. Claim markers always mark the boundaries of claims. If it is claimed, some claimholders may give you permission.

4. Join your nearest prospecting club as some of their members can advise you where to go. To start with, detect areas of ground where previous prospectors have found gold. You will quickly learn the tell-tale signs of old gold diggings. Tailings and uneven ground suggest previous workings. Rocks thrown out of creek beds and gullies are also indicators. Old shafts and quartz heaps are worth investigating.  It is seldom that all the nuggets have been found. The latest high-tech detectors are capable of picking up gold missed by the earlier-model machines and careless detecting. It is far easier for a beginner to find a little gold in a pre-worked area by careful detecting, than it is to find in an untried area. Your new hi-tech Minelab will beep on tiny or deeper nuggets that older machines weren’t capable of locating. Remember that generally there are a dozen match-head size pieces for every pea-size nugget, and a dozen pea-size nuggets for every coin-size nugget.

5. You should find some gold nuggets in the tailing piles of old diggings, so detect them carefully and thoroughly. Every area of placering  has the potential to produce at least a few nuggets. There is far more gold left in previously unworked ground and this is where fortunes can be made. But it will take a little more experience to know where to look. After a while you will be able to recognize the type of ground that has potential of producing nuggets. In some areas the indicator may be scattered quartz, in others, it may be ironstone or shale. Search in the vicinity of these workings if the ground is still hard or rocky. This unworked ground may have been too poor for the old timers to mine, but may prove productive to you with your detector. If you purchase a Minelab, with their superior-depth capabilities, it may be wiser to start your search in undisturbed ground closer to the diggings. New detectors will penetrate deeper to find any gold that the old timers left behind. 

6. Don’t detect in ground that is deep and soft. Gold, being heavy, sinks down to bedrock. If you look for ground where the bedrock (clay, slate) is less than about 2-3 feet deep would be a good idea. Any nuggets will be resting on the bed rock, well within reach of your detectors ability. After you have experienced some goldfields, you will become familiar with the type of ground that may hold gold. This knowledge will later enable you to do some more ambitious prospecting on the fringes of the goldfields, and beyond.  Please remember to always fill in detector holes.

How to Use Your Detector

1. When you find a promising area, do not detect haphazardly. Choose a small patch, and cover every bit of it. Do this by keeping the search coil at about 1 inch or less from the ground and swing it slowly. Swing the coil no more than about 2 foot from side to side and move forward no more than the length of the search coil for each swing. With some detectors, about one third of a coil’s length is more sensitive than the rest, so don’t progress forward too rapidly. If you find nothing, keep trying other areas until you eventually locate a nugget. Then be extra careful, because where there is one there are usually more in the vicinity.

2. Ignore any wide, gradual changes in sound, they are simply due to ground mineralisation changes. Dig up any short or sharp signals, no matter how faint. They could be small hot rocks, scrap metal or gold.

3. If you search in fixed ground-balance, you may have to re-balance every few minutes, depending on the condition of the ground.

4. When you locate gold and the surface of the ground is littered with leaves, sticks or rocks, then get your garden rake out and clean up the area. If there are small nuggets around, you will double your success by doing this, for your detector will penetrate deeper into the ground.

5. If the signal is faint, first scrape a little soil from the spot to one side. If the signal has moved out of the hole, then sprinkle the soil from the dug ground onto the search coil, a handful at a time. It will beep when the metal object touches it.

6. Bury a pea-sized piece of metal at 6-8 inches. Pass your coil over it and get used to the faint sound it gives off. Practice out the where the ground has little mineralisation, before you attempt to detect the more difficult gold fields.

7. Do not try to cover a large area by impatiently moving from spot to spot. Most beginners make this very mistake. I’ve seen them charging all over the place looking for the big magic nugget. Concentrate on slow coverage in one spot. If you find nothing after patient and thorough detecting, then try somewhere else.

What Success to Expect

If you follow the outlined steps you should find at least a little gold, depending of course, on the potential of the area. You just need to be patient and willing to dig any deep-sounding faint signals. Be prepared to be somewhat disappointed with many of these targets. They could be mineralised charcoal, soil, hot rocks or clay. Relax and enjoy your new hobby. Don’t try and rush success, for it will come. Happy hunting, and welcome to the prospecting family.