New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

welcome to the forum alastair. with the price of gold these days i'm sure it will be a better bet than snowboarding.

i'm not sure about it being less dangerous though. whether detecting, sniping, sluicing or whatever i've managed to have many a hair raising moment out there in nature.

one day i reckon my luck might run out but at least it will be somewhere scenic.

not to put you off, the hunt for gold is one of the best hobbies around i reckon. even on shite days finding nothing the reward is in getting out there and discovering the hidden nooks and crannies of the country.

good luck mate.

p.s. if you want to find some real gold you want to get out of auckland and head down to the mainland, that's where it's at.

Welcome to the site - Hope your new chosen hobby turns out to be the best hobby you ever had. Always wanted to get up Thames and Coromandel but never made it. Gold mining is a great passtime and from the day I first went I was hooked and that was fifty years and more ago.

I find though that bending over panning gives my back a hard time so hope you have a method that dispenses with a pan until its wash up time.

As for the Salmon - Nickel Spinners and Chemical Persuasion are the best methods as it circumvents the need to be patient and the uncertainty of going home empty handed...just joking - or am I?

Yes your right about chemical persuasion - my first escapade with that was when I was about ten and my grandfather told me that as a boy he used to put carbide into a marble bottle with some water and then hold it upside down until the pressure held the marble secure against the seal then dropped it into the creek so I had to try it - no marble bottle so an ordinary one will do - carbide in it then water screw on the top and hold it while I ponder where to put it to watch it blow up - in the end a threw it under the hedge except it didnt get there - it blew up moments after I let it go...it wasnt for another twenty years that I actually succeeded in blowing myself up good and proper but that was with blasting powder.

After one of my accidents - I was filling one of those old stationary motors up with petrol while it was bouncing around and it had no exhaust pipe and the one gallon can went up in my paws - I went up as well - ended up in hospital and they gave me morphine - I am sure they had clouds painted on the ceiling - they were moving across the ceiling anyway - the miserable blasted nurse wouldnt give me a lifetime supply. You could always come down this way - bring the wife to do the work - bring another female to entertain me, get yourself hypnotized so there aint no pain and bring the bucket of morphine with you!

Yes I do dream of getting up thataway one day and I should really plan it as each day going by is one day closer to Purgatory.

When you do feel free to get in touch if I havent woken up dead before then - you never know when the Grim Reaper calls.

I also set my self up in smoke filling the gold dredge engine in tussock country once but the engine was on a gravel bar and I had my diving suit on so just did a quick submerge job.

Re: Roman Candles - I used to get bullied at school so decided to ambush the guilty party - waited behind a hedge with an old cap and ball pistol with a sky rocket down the barrel until he came down the road on his bike - when he was about 100 yards away when I lit the rocket and aimed it form eye level and at about fifty yards the rocket took off out of the barrel - it went right toward him and just whistled past his ugly mug and he canned off the bike. I took off to but next day at school we were both well subdued - him because he nearly met an untimely end being a victim to a missile and me because the exhaust from the rocket when I aimed it burned off my eye lashes and all the hair on my fringe and nearly blinded me...we live an dlearn - I also wear glasses now!