Over the months of COVID-19 lockdown in Victoria Australia I spent my evenings studying Geology and potential places of interest, particularly Crown land where with a Prospecting Licence I’m free to detect, and what I find is mine.
I developed my own maps, geo-referenced them and loaded them on my iPhone so I could direct myself to the exact spots of interest.
On the first relaxing of restrictions I met up with a few of my gold detecting mates over the Queen’s Birthday long weekend in June. We camped right on the gold. However, on the Monday holiday I guided a couple of my mates, who wanted to join me, to a couple of spots I had marked. We saw a lot of great looking ground. We checked out the first spot but decided to move on. The second spot was exactly what I was looking for, quartz shedding off a saddle reef in to the head of a gully worked by old timers. Within 10 minutes I was on to a beautiful mellow low high target. 6 inches down I was in to hard packed gravel. The target was getting louder and louder. At 12-13 inches and working up a good sweat, it was out. It was a much larger rock than the nugget ended up being. I was able to break off a tip and saw the slightest glimmer of a couple of adjacent points with gold showing. Feeling the weight in my hand I was off to show my mates, with a real step of excitement. Both my mates passed their detector coils over the rock, and heard it scream.
All three of us went to the car to get a cloth to wrap it in as we attempted to crack it open with the flat end of a pick and a flat rock. The rock broke in half with no further sign of gold. I gave the half with the gold showing another crack and all of a sudden a nice gold nugget was found. I picked at it with my fingers to reveal a solid gold nugget encased in ironstone and a little quartz. After a week in AliBrite to dissolve the ironstone a magnificent crystalline piece of gold showed itself. It’s a beautiful piece. Photos don’t do it justice. This nugget hasn’t moved far, straight off the reef. It’s not huge but this is my biggest piece to date. I can’t wait to get back to this spot. Cheers from down under, Golden Triangle Victoria Australia.
Andrew - Australia & NZ
