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That evening as I settled in for my first
night in Australia, it occurred to me that
less than 24 hours ago I had been sitting in
Los Angeles waiting…no scratch that, praying
for the attendants to announce it was time
to board. It’s funny, but after spending
most the afternoon in the airport I could
hardly wait to climb into the plane and
claim my seat. Of course this meant another
grueling fourteen hours lay ahead, but I
didn’t care, at least we would be on our
way. I have made the journey Down Under
eight times now, and still haven’t come to
grips with the confines of air travel. Some
lucky people recline their chair and nod off
the moment the plane leaves the tarmac. Not
me. I’m usually the annoying guy doing laps
up and down the aisles. Once the meal has
been served and the first movie finished, I
find myself ready to bail out, with or
without a parachute! Sure it beats swimming,
but if there was a highway connecting
Australia to North America, you can bet my
old truck and I would be on it.
Fortunately when my father and I landed in
Melbourne our mate Bob Armstrong was waiting
for us with a car at the airport. I say
fortunately, because the jetlag was really
sinking in and I doubt either of us was in
any shape to deal with rush hour traffic.
Especially traffic driving on the opposite
side of the road! Once our luggage was
loaded we set off on a two hour drive to his
home in Bendigo, which we would use as a
base camp for our excursions into the nearby
goldfields. We first met Bob while
prospecting near Sandstone, Western
Australia back in 2000. His outgoing
personality and sense of humor meshed well
with ours, and it didn’t take many nights
around the campfire before the three of us
became close friends. Once a professional
fisherman, Bob left life on the open water
to try his hand at prospecting. He
discovered he had a knack for it, plus the
lifestyle suited him, so he eventually
decided to make it a full-time career. Since
then he has gone on to become one of the
most successful detectorists in the country.
The following morning as the Toyota carried
us further from civilization, the grassy
pastures and farmland that had dotted the
outskirts of Bendigo quickly gave way to
thick forests of box-ironbark and mallee. In
places, the plants grew so closely together
it would have been difficult for a nimble
kangaroo to slip through, let alone a
prospector toting pick and shovel. With
scrub as thick as this, it was easy to see
how this place had come to be known as the
Whipstick.
As we rounded a bend in the dirt track, the
truck came to a slow halt. Here the dense
vegetation had been cut back to reveal a
scene that could only be described on paper
as a moonscape. Acres had been cleared
leaving behind a vast expanse of exposed
bedrock. “What happened here?” I asked
staring out the window. “Its’ been surfaced
mate,” Bob replied with a smile on his face.
“This area was so rich the old-timers dug
the entire place down to bottom and carted
away the gold-bearing gravels to be washed
elsewhere. They took thousands of nuggets
from here, some of them as big as
100-ounces.” I looked again at the clearing
with a new sense of awe. Moving this amount
of material by hand would have been no easy
task; the area must have been rich indeed.
The Victorian countryside was unlike
anything I had encountered before in my
travels through Australia. Queensland and
the Northern Territory had both been humid
and tropical with waist-high grass, while
Western Australia had been flat, open and
arid. But this was something entirely new.
The route we took wound us through paddocks
of emerald colored grass, gently rolling
hills, and dense forests inhabited by flocks
of brightly colored parrots and kangaroos. A
near paradise made even better by the fact
that it was gold-bearing. And the actual
towns…Well, as beautiful as the countryside
was; the towns themselves were no less
amazing. Victoria is as rich in history as
it is in gold. As I strolled along the
walkways past the old pubs and squares it
was difficult not to get a sense of what
life must have been like more than a century
ago when the gold rush was at its peak. The
towering Victorian-era brick buildings,
ornate churches, and wide streets were
evidence of a region that once knew great
wealth.
Victorian Goldfield History
Located in the far southeastern part of the
continent and occupying just three percent
of Australia (similar in size to Great
Britain), Victoria is the smallest of the
mainland states. In July 1851 it gained its
independence from New South Wales and became
a separate colony. In the same month the new
Victorian government announced that gold had
been discovered at Warrandyte northwest of
Melbourne. Fueled by extravagant stories of
riches gained during the Californian Gold
Rush in 1849, the “fever” hit the new colony
with full force. By the end of that year,
massive strikes had been made throughout
central Victoria and tens of thousands of
hopeful miners from around the world flocked
to the goldfields. In April 1852, The
Times of London declared: "…this is
California all over again, but, it would
appear, California on a larger scale…"
The early rushes were confined mainly to the
working of alluvial (or placer) gold, in an
area that has come to be known as the Golden
Triangle. Though Victoria pales in size to
the other Australian states, it has been one
of the richest. In fact, over 80% of the
world’s largest nuggets have been located in
this region, including the massive,
Welcome Stranger, weighing approx. 2,332
ounces, found near Moliagul in 1869.
Another area called Mount Alexander
was one of the world’s richest shallow
alluvial goldfields, yielding around four
million ounces of gold, most of which was
found in the first two years of the rush and
within sixteen feet of the surface.
Another notable discovery was the Poseidon
Lead found in 1906 at Tarnagulla. In 1912
the Department of Mines published a report
titled “List of Nuggets Found in Victoria”,
which included 98 nuggets weighing from 20
to 953 ounces all found on the Poseidon
Lead. One of the largest among them was the
Poseidon Nugget, which had a net
weight of 703 ounces. All 98 nuggets were
found between 1906 and 1912 at depths
ranging from 10 inches to 85 feet below the
surface.
An estimated 79 million ounces of gold has
been won from both reef and alluvial mines
in Victoria, and with the introduction of
the modern metal detector in the late
1970’s, that figure has certainly grown. One
of the biggest challenges faced by the early
detector operators three decades ago was the
extreme ground mineralization found on the
Victorian goldfields. Millions of years of
erosion had created a mantle of soil that
was exceedingly rich in iron oxides. These
oxides, specifically magnetite, hematite,
and limonite all adversely affect the
performance of a metal detector by
generating false signals. These false
signals are referred to as “ground noise”
and make it incredibly difficult to
distinguish a true target response from one
simply caused by the soil.
Despite the harsh ground conditions and
limited capabilities of their machines,
early VLF operators unearthed enormous
quantities of gold. Even with the heavy
mineralization, these electronic pioneers
had little trouble locating multiple-ounce
nuggets concealed by only a few inches of
topsoil. New patches were found in the
untouched virgin ground, but many of the
mullock heaps created by the old-timers were
found to be littered with nuggets of all
sizes. One of the most famous pieces
discovered during this time was the famed
876-ounce Hand of Faith Nugget, found
by Kevin Hillier at Kingower with a Garrett
Groundhog. This nugget was sold to the Gold
Nugget Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada for a
reputed $1,000,000.00! This spectacular
treasure is still on display in the casino
lobby, and I can tell you from personal
experience, it’s enough to make your knees
weak even if you haven’t been sampling the
complimentary liquor!
While in Victoria we visited a number of
gold-bearing sites, some of which included:
Dunolly, Rushworth, Wedderburn, Maryborough,
Avoca, and the Whipstick. Although these
goldfields have been worked by detectorists
for the past 30+ years, there are still
plenty of nuggets to be had. Using the new
Minelab GPX-4000 metal detectors coupled
with the Nugget Finder Coils, our group was
able to pull gold every day; most of it from
places considered hammered to death. One
such area was a place that had not only been
dug by the early miners, but was later
“pushed” by prospectors with a bulldozer and
detected. We knew the cream of the crop had
already been knocked out, but suspected we
were the first to hit it using the latest in
detector technology. Our hunch was right,
and after a full day of careful searching,
we pulled 1 ½ ounces of shiny nuggets off
the old patch.
Besides working the pushes, a bulk of our
time was spent hunting amongst the old
diggings. These areas worked by the
old-timers were fairly easy to identify; one
just had to keep watch along the gullies for
rounded mounds of dirt. These mounds,
referred to as mullock heaps, are usually
circular in shape with a hole in the center;
similar to a gopher hole but on a much
grander scale. The hole is where the miners
dug, and the mound surrounding the rim of
the hole is composed of the waste material
dug out while tunneling to bedrock. While
the best values were found on the bedrock,
many nuggets still trapped in the upper
layers of gravel were unknowingly cast aside
with the waste dirt. Detectorists have found
nuggets ranging from a few grains up to
50-ounces on these “throw-out” heaps!
Although I never got my coil over one of
these monsters, I did have the good fortune
to actually hold some in my hands. One
morning before heading out into the field,
we decided to pay a visit to Neville, one of
Bob’s close friends. Neville has earned a
reputation as one of the most respected gold
buyers in the state, and having found many
hundreds of ounces of gold himself, he’s no
slouch with a metal detector either. We had
just finished our second cup of coffee when
Neville leaned back and asked, “You blokes
interested in seeing some gold?” Now, I’ve
seen my fair share of gold over the years,
but I never pass up an opportunity when it
comes to the yellow metal. He might as well
have been asking a starving man if he’d like
a juicy double cheeseburger! The answer must
have been written all over my face because
he just smiled and said, “Hang on then, I’ll
be back in a sec.”
He returned to the table carrying a large
leather bag. “Now these are already sold,
but I thought you might enjoy seeing them
before they ship off.” Without any further
hesitation he proceeded to tip it open
spilling close to 100-ounces of gold onto
the table! “Nice, huh.” he said. A lot of
4-letter words came to my mind, but “nice”
wasn’t one of them. The bag contained an
assortment of nuggets ranging from thumbnail
sized bits up to solid chunks weighing
several pounds! If handling those beauties
wasn’t shock enough, he took my father and I
over to the Gold Museum at Ballarat to view
one of the finest nugget collections in the
country. Inside were artifacts gathered from
the goldfields, ancient coins, and of course
nuggets – lots of them! I had to check
several times to make sure I wasn’t leaving
drool behind on the display cases!
If you’ve ever dreamed of chasing gold in
the Land Down Under, Victoria should
definitely top your list of places to visit.
Compared to other Australian states that are
largely controlled by big mining companies
and station owners, Victoria is probably the
easiest to legally prospect in. With
numerous Regional Parks, State Forests and
other reserves, there are thousands of
hectares of public land where a person can
swing their metal detector. All that is
required to gain access to this land is a
Miner’s Right. This is a license that
authorizes you to search for gold and other
minerals on Crown Land. At the time of my
visit they cost $27.55 AUD and were valid
for two years.
Before booking your plane ticket, remember
that their seasons are opposite to the
United States. Their winter is our summer,
and vice-versa. Although it can get
downright chilly in Victoria, compared to
North America, their winters are mild and in
my opinion there is no better time to
explore the goldfields. Accommodations in
this region of Australia are easy to come
by. Hotels, motels and caravan parks can be
found in most every town, as can car
rentals, gas stations, grocery stores, and
restaurants. As for road conditions, most
everything we encountered on our trip was
2-wheel drive accessible.
As far as metal detectors are concerned; if
you are going to tackle the Australian
goldfields you will definitely need a
machine capable of handling the severe
ground mineralization. The Australian-made
Minelabs are revered by both professional
and novice hunters for their ability to
ignore this mineralization, and for their
excellent depth penetration. These detectors
are everything the manufacturer claims them
to be, but be prepared; they are one of the
most expensive hand-held detectors on the
market. A good quality Minelab PI unit can
cost anywhere from $2,000 to $4,500. If you
do plan on buying one of these detectors do
it in the US, if not, you’ll pay at least a
thousand dollars more for the same product
in Australia.
Even though I didn’t need a wheelbarrow to
cart home my nuggets, this was by far one of
the most enjoyable prospecting expeditions I
have ever made. The seemingly endless fields
of green and dense stands of Ironbark were a
stark contrast from the flat, red landscape
of the western half of the continent I
usually visit. It was truly some of the most
beautiful gold-bearing country I had ever
seen. If the opportunity arises, I would
highly recommend a trip to Victoria. The
scenery is spectacular, the people are warm
and hospitable, and of course there’s always
the chance of walking over a massive nugget!
My only advice is to steer clear of the
Vegemite no matter what the Aussies tell
you! I wish all of you the very best of luck
with your prospecting.
For more information on using a metal
detector, please visit the author’s website
at:
www.ArizonaOutback.com.
References:
Gold Prospecting,
Douglas M. Stone. Outdoor Press Pty Ltd.
1999. Shepparton, Victoria, Australia.
The Victorian Prospector’s Guide and
Handbook.
11th Edition. Paoletti’s Maps &
Videos P/L, 2004. Victoria, Australia.
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