Where to look for gold nugets tell tail signs

[goldcrow]

Hi all i am new to nuget hunting. I have a minelab SD 2200D have used it a few times the discriminater works good distinguishing between iron and alloys. I have read that near old volcanic activite are good places to look. and there are some towns near hear that wear founded from the gold rush thinking of trying in the forestry near the town. any insights would be much appreciated your friend with gold fever from Australia.

[kiwi jw]

G'day Goldcrow, Research, research, research. Read LOTS.....Learn geology.....be prepared to travel bloody miles & when you think you have been where no man has steped foot.....think again.....You wont be the first.....& that is with a detector. Anywhere were gold has been found B4 is a good place to start, all be that it has been thrashed by god knows how many makes & models of detectors over the years. You must have been on a few of your ozzy gold forums & the like & will be well aware of this. It isnt that easy any more.......hasnt been for a looooooooong time. The shallow big nuggets are long gone. You will be walking waving your wand in the foots steps of hundreds if not thousands that have been B4 you. Technology has helped in getting the bigger gold at depth. To be in with a chance you need the latest & greatest. Unless you are extremly lucky & walk over a patch or a solitiry big nugget that no one else has. But chances of that are slim 2day......but we as prospectors/gold hunters are for ever more optimistic & hopeful. You really need to approach this with out making money in mind. Go into it with a love for the outdoors, the places it will take you to & the people you will meet. That is gold of another kind.
Hope I havnt put you off or painted a dissmal picture. Good luck & keep us posted on how you do.

JW

[goldcrow]

Thanks jw for the encouragment : yea i know its not easy to find but i still think there are some nugets out there to find. I think i have more chance finding a few nugets than winning lotto.I wont to do some panning as well with the price of gold at the moment its worth having a go.

[extractor]

Research ; a lot of it

[goldcrow]

Hi what books do you recommend jw.

[kiwi jw]

Hi there Goldcrow, That is a tuffy. I have a huge collection of gold related books. I started off just buying books for my own personal research. Mine of course are New Zealand related as far as geology & gold deposit areas. I actualy started out on any historic gold related books I could lay my hands onto. Books that were written either directly or from diaries by the very first or early pionners who were talking first hand about gold discoveries & locations & who with their very own hands were carving a living out of the bush & developing land for farming. And who often turned their hands to finding gold, if it was present, when times were really tuff. These are the type of books & writtings that our history has been recorded from. Very interesting stuff. I do have quite a few to do with Australia as well. I now deal in these type of books as there seems to be a huge demand for them. Of course they have been out of print now for a long time. Your country is so fast & gold deposit areas so numerous.
There are of course books on geology, books on how gold occurs, Alluvial & load. Books on prospecting for gold. Finding & tracing gold to a source, loaming for gold. Books on mining gold both reef & alluvial. You would no doubt have heard of Ion Idriess book Prospecting for gold. That is a good read for you. Another good read is Ed Wallers "And There's Gold Out There." Doug Stone's "Gold Prospecting" which has a lot of maps & deals a lot with detecting in Aussie. There is of course the series of books by David de Havelland "Gold & Ghosts" Worth its weight in gold with heaps of locations & maps & mining methods. There are I think 4 in the series & they cover all areas of known gold deposits in Aussie. There are really too numerous to name But these would be a good start. You could start getting the Australian Gold Gem & Treasure magazine which is a monthly publication & deals a lot in detecting. Research is the key. Do a goggle search for detecting forums in Aussie & comb over them

Happy hunting

JW

[goldcrow]

Thanks jw much appreciated.If i could bye you a beer i would.I have been bying the gem and treasure. would like to get over to WA there been finding some there. but for now i will try out some local spots.I will let you now if i find anything.

[Relichunter1]

Come on fellas...Australia is a huge place, and your telling me that it's all hunted out . I live in the California Motherlode and if any place has been hit hard it's over here. I am still finding gold with my Whites MXT. Just this week in Nevada City, a 9 pound solid lunker was found and with it a few more 1-3 ounce nuggets. Metal detecting for gold is not easy, you must have lots, and I mean lots of patience and faith , go for days without finding nothing but iron, lead and other pieces of junk. Most people give up and hang up the detector, but for those few...the Gold is a big reward for those that met the challenge. Get out their and find it.. In gold country dig all signals.. the one you pass, just might have been a deep one you barely heard.

[kiwi jw]

No it certainly hasnt all gone but it is getting harder every day. Every piece found is one piece less & every piece found has been sitting there for god knows how many thousands of years & isnt going to grow back over night & be replaced in our life time. You need to get to the most remote spots you can find out about & that could take you days & days which makes it hard for those of us that have a day job that isnt prospecting.
Australia is a BIG place but there are a lot of people "out there" doing it & the likely places will have had a hammering so the chance of finding something decent will be in areas that have been ignored because thay have been thought of not being favourable gold country. Yes those spots do exist but are really out of the bounds for your weekend & hobby fossicker, but it is all good fun trying. You never do know your luck.

Good luck & happy hunting.

JW

[Jack Hamilton]

People still find lots of nuggets in Australia. I have read many articles on Chris Gholsons expeditions. What he does, is go out with a crew. They all go off in different directions, after picking a likely location. They stay in contact via radio. When one guy finds a nugget they all converge on the area and scan it thoroughly. I've read articles in Gold Prospectors, the Gold prospectors association of americas magazine and seen pics of ounces and ounces of Australian gold. Its out there still. Like the others have said, read, then read some more. Explore and learn, then read some more and repeat all of the above. Most of all, enjoy what you are doing. Its the thrill of the hunt. The reward to me, is the feeling of research paying off. Best of luck my fellow seeker.

[kiwi jw]

Hi there, Yes but Chris is a professional prospector & does it full time for a living as does Jonathan Porter. As I said, It is hard for your part time hobby prospector that can only get out in the weekends. It can take you more than two days to get to a spot, let alone detect it & get back home for work on the monday. Research is the key & so is time & having the backing of a bit of money to carry you through to cover all your over heads, fuel being a huge one when driving around Austarlia. And if you find no gold........??

JW

[tinpan]

hi all i live in a town of 100,000 people , and most of my gold is found in the junky mining areas within the town or on the fringe forrests. most spots takes about 10 minutes to travel too. Experts say all the gold is in the middle of no-ware but seems they don,t know everything . Heres some of my finds from the last 14 months


tinpan

[Hoser John]

GREAT lookn' gold and tons a au 2 u 2 -John

[kiwi jw]

Hi Guys, Yes very nice gold & well done. It sure hasnt all been found & it gobsmacks me how I can keep going back to the same old sluiced workings that I have been going on about in the Gold Hunting in NZ post & still keep finding small bits. Even after going over the same ground time & time again with the same coils & same settings. It also gobsmacks me as to why no one else has detected these workings when they are the closest workings to where I am staying. There are quite a few people who detect in the area but none of them have been to these workings. But then that has worked out good for me.



Happy hunting

JW

[lamar]

Dar group;
Gold is consistently located in areas which are considered as *hunted out* because gold is constantly being uncovered and exposed due to the effects of erosion. It is this erosion that *re-charges* rivers, streams and washes.
Your friend;
LAMAR

[Lanny in AB]

I've found gold where it had no business being, but most of the gold I've found has been in areas that were famous, early discovery sites--ones that were extensively worked by the regular miners and by the meticulous Chinese. However, no one, no matter how efficient they were, nor no matter how long they worked an area got all of the gold.

There's always some rock that hasn't been moved, some piece of brush that's discouraged countless others, some sheet of bedrock that hasn't been pried up, some undiscovered higher bench, some virgin strip of ground under hand-stacked cobbles, some trashy area that what too noisy for former nugget shooters to detect, or some newly slumped washed out or caved off area that's waiting to be explored and detected.

The gold is still there; however, there are still new virgin areas waiting to be discovered, but the very fact that they're still waiting to be found lets you know that most of them are in remote, hostile environments as the Oldtimers were very good at prospecting out gold and goldfields.

So, I'd first look in old goldfields that were very rich, then after you find some gold--and you will if you stick with it, branch out from there. As others have suggested, tons of research really does pay off.

Good luck, and all the best,

Lanny