New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Brrrr! What a shock to the system - from the nice warm climates of the WA outback back to snow in Christchurch! Though I must admit it was a little chilly at night in the desert. Had a bit of a mental block about Oz and the cold so packed quite an inadequate sleeping bag for the outback cold nights and ended up sleeping in 2 layers of clothes :P

Had an awesome trip - huge thanks to Glen and his wife Marianne for organising the trip and making me feel most welcome to join them on their trip both during and after the gold mission. Was also awesome meeting the Kiwi lads who made up Camp Emu / Camp Dysfunctional on the gold trip. Look forward to popping up Nelson way and catching up with you at some point. If Stumbler gives me the okay I'll upload a beautiful sunset video to Youtube and post the link here to give you a laugh ;) Unfortunately I copied the wrong video for some WA dead tree removal techniques so will have to try and grab that off Stumbler too to share.

The area Mark the owner of Gold Prospecting Australia took us too was an easy drive out of Leonora in WA. The whole group found gold and Mark was a great guide - gave lots of great tips on what to look out for in the Aussie outback to help find gold and was very hands on with helping improve peoples detecting technique if they wanted help. I learnt heaps and think my detecting skills have come along in leaps and bounds. I've been surprised at the smallness of some of the targets I found including a number of wee nuggets at the 0.1 gram mark. Apparently finding these small targets means that you're getting the detecting technique right, though sometimes I wouldn't mind having a bad technique and finding the larger nuggets! :P

Unfortunately the area around Leonora seems pretty flogged so we probably didn't pull as much gold out as we could have, and indeed heard from other tour members usually people on Marks tours usually find a lot more gold. Though saying that, the Kiwi lads did show up the Aussies with both pulling out the biggest nugget (around the 20 gram mark I believe) and the largest number of nuggets.

We also had a great tour regarding members - everyone was so friendly and helpful, lending a helping hand, solar panel, detector coils, etc. when they could.

Attached are a few photos. Generally the gold pulled out of the ground was pretty rough, not like the nice smooth clean washed specimens usually found over here. Also a number "specimens" were found where the gold is still with the quartz.

Cheers,
Gavin

Edited by user Friday, 8 June 2012 11:16:18 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

looks good gavin. i have been doing some work around a 4500 and have seen sub .1 stuff found. when i say found it is like a needle in a hay stack trying to figure out which little piece is the gold. at least when it's that small in your plastic trowel you know it's not a bullet or similar.

Congrats, Gavin! Sounds like a great trip to do!

Start organising for the 2013 trip now with them ;)

Sounds like they sell out fast!

Nice gold Gavin! WTG! :)

Cheers guys :) Not quite paid off the 4500 yet, if anything the amount I need to find has increased with the overall cost of hiring 4wd etc. on hols - eek! :P But I'm working on it ;)

A pretty poor 2.6 grams made up of 7 nuggets I'm afraid, and probably a few extra grams in the quartz specimen.But a lot richer in experience and knowledge ;)

Mine for Gold is correct, it is the experience and fun times that are important; yeah us Kiwis did kick Aussie arse, great trip alright.