Gold is a funny thing but more importantly people are even funnier! This might all sound a little cryptic but please bear with me while I elaborate. I often talk with detector operators either in the field as I travel or when they call me on the phone here at our business ‘Aurum Australis’. The biggest common denominator is their burning desire to find some gold, particularly the big ones like I find in my videos, so the general drift of our conversations comes down to what it is I look for in my search for those trophy nuggets I seem to find so regularly.
It occurred to me recently that I’ve been going about this all wrong; that my message has been somehow twisted in my misguided attempts at enthusing people about a subject I’m very passionate about. Those glory nuggets are wonderful; in my case they represent a payday, an actual in your face physical monetary reward for all the hard work that has gone into their discovery, but let's be brutally honest here, we would all dearly love to become a member of the one-ounce club wouldn’t we?
With Minelab becoming a ‘one ounce club’ member is a distinct possibility BUT, thinking this all through I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of my larger finds over the years have been what I would call sitting ducks, in other words the metal detector I had in my hand, which is chockablock full of innovative technological advantages, has been doing the bulk of the work for me so when I eventually pass my coil over the right spot it yells loud and clear, “hey mate, there’s a stonking big nugget under your coil and you had better dig it out”.
That’s a pretty big thing to admit for a guy who is known around the world for his ability with a metal detector and you’re probably now quite rightly asking yourself the obvious question, “so where does the skill come into it then?” Simply put I can sum it all up with some common sense practical advice proffered by a mentor of mine when I first started out in this game back in 1987. “Jonathan” he said, “chase the little ones and let the big ones look after themselves”
Recently I used this advice to good effect; I went back to an old patch because there had been a fire through the area clearing away all the long grass and weeds that have kept me from detecting it for a few years now. Knowing that a lot of smaller gold has come off the spot I selected a 15 x 12 Commander Monoloop as my coil of choice thanks to its excellent sensitivity to small gold, but also the amount of ground coverage I could achieve due to its elliptical shape. First target was a tiny 0.1 gram piece buried a few inches under the ash and soil, it stood out nice and clear from the back ground noise thanks to the Fine Gold Timings and a Gain setting of 14, basically it was a ‘dig me, sitting duck’.
For the next hour I investigated every little murmur of the detector and was rewarded with numerous little nuggets at good depths, finally ending up with close on 5 grams or so for my troubles. None of the gold was what I would call glory gold, but they add up.
Once I knew the gold was there I ended up having to use all my skills as a good detector operator to find them. A little later working further down the slope I received a faint, but broad response that was dipping into the warble type audio state (both channels reacting to the target equally causing an ‘in and out’ response), ferreting down deep into the cream colored earth I retrieved a 4 gram slug, taking my total to 9 or so grams which I immediately savored by giving myself a little consolatory pat on the back! I then carefully worked my way back up the slope and hit a screamer of a signal at the base of a tree between my previous dig holes that just about knocked my socks off boots and all! Subsequent frantic digging down into the soft ash covered earth the signal became progressively louder and louder until on top of the pile of dirt I could see a solid flat 27-gram slug of gold smiling back at me!
Both the larger pieces were reasonably easy signals to pick out from the background noise, it was the little bits that required the concentration levels and good detector skills required to find them, however it was those little nuggets that kept me in the zone long enough to get my coil over the payday nuggets that now allow me to show them off to you. So in future remember what my mentor once said to me about metal detecting for gold, “Chase the little ones and let the big ones look after themselves”
Jonathan Porter
The Outback Prospector
Aurum Australis
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