The Gold I've Missed

[Reg Wilson]

I started missing gold as soon as I started detecting, and this is the sad saga of just how much.

Wedderburn in the north of the central Victorian goldfields is where I found my first color, and  Schicer gully was where I lost my detecting virginity. A little piece of a few grams beneath a tree. After finding no more there, my mate at the time (who first introduced me to prospecting with a detector) and I moved to Beggary hill, just to the north of Wedderburn, where we found a patch of small colors on the side of the hill. I was trying to learn as much as I could about this detecting game by making friends with some of the guys who knew a bit about alluvial gold and where it could be found with a detector. I had learned about 'surfacing', and the importance of detecting around these areas, so a patch of shallow surfacing nearby captured my attention, but there where so many old tin cans that I gave up on it after a few hours.

 A local chap that I had become friends with lived in the town and had a mate who made his own rum. On a regular basis I would drop in to his place with a couple of bottles of Coke, and we would talk about gold. On my arrival one night he brought out a pillow case in which was wrapped a very large nugget. It contained a little ironstone, and was a magnificent piece that weighed 84 ozs. His son and two of his mates had found it using an early Whites detector that my friend Luke had loaned to the kids for a school project on gold prospecting. He then bought out a local map to show me where the kids had found it. Well, you guessed it. Down by the fence among the tin cans where I had given up on Beggary hill.

[LipCa]

Sounds like a bad nightmare to me.......

[mn90403]

Those tin can fields may be the best gold that is still left in the states.

Mitchel

[Northeast]

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

Those tin can fields may be the best gold that is still left in the states.

Mitchel

And maybe Australia too Mitchell.  The Equinox 800 may be the answer ?

[Jin]

Is this the one?

[beatup]

Yea things like that happen i try not to think about it happening to me.

[Reg Wilson]

Yeah Jin, that's the one, but the kid's name was Turner, not Yurner.

The families got greedy and started a big legal battle over the rights. By the time it was over there was no money left after the lawyer vultures took their cut. The detector was a Whites that belonged to Adam's dad Luke, and Adam was the one who detected the nugget, but the other parents stuffed it up. GREED.

[Reg Wilson]

At the time that the Beggary Lump was found, my mate Ian and I were only weekend prospectors, and on our next visit to Wedderburn the town was packed with detectorists, and Beggary hill was a rush site. The pub and caravan park were happy, but we were not.

Our research told us that nearby Kingower had been rich with big nuggets at shallow depth. The Blanch Barkly nugget, found in 1853, and weighing a whopping 1,473 ozs was the biggest found in the area, and we set up camp near the old State school. There was a surfaced patch running into shallow workings just to the south of the old school, and this is where we concentrated our search. We were getting the odd small color from around the edge of the surface patch, and a few 'throw outs' from the heaps. Our yield rate had not been quite as good as Wedderburn, but we were getting enough to keep us happy, and this was our spot for a few weeks. We liked this area as there were only a few prospectors about.

Back home in Geelong I received an exited call from Ian one morning. "Have you heard"? he practically yelled into the phone. "Heard what"? I asked. "Some bloke has found a huge nugget at Kingower". he spluttered. "How big and where,"? I Questioned. "Don't know mate", said Ian, "I've only just heard about it".

Well, that big nugget was the Hand of Faith, found by Kevin Hillier with a Garret not more than a hundred meters East of where we parked or car in September 1980. 875 troy ozs.

[mn90403]

Oh my ... oh my ... ohhhh

[Jin]

Interesting that in 1989 Kevin Hillier said "he went back to the spot over the past 12 months and only found 20gms" - but that was using the same detector he found the hand with. You would think that 9 years later he could afford an upgrade. Wonder if that spot gave up much more over the years since.