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G'day Steve, I could not locate the booklet about the finding of the Hand of Faith by Kevin Hillier. Anyway I think its now been reasonably established what detector model The Hand was found with. After thinking about it while looking for the booklet, I am fairly sure that at the time the Hand of Faith was found in 1980, the Groundhog was not yet being sold in Australia. In 1980 the Garrett Deepseeker must have been the most commonly used detector by the serious electronic prospectors in Victoria. It was certainly the most expensive detector and thus the top of the range ... like the latest Minelab PIs are today. It was however a detector I never managed to master as it was extremely noisy in Australian soil. I used mine in the Nth Queensland goldfields of Georgetown and Ebagoola where there was quite a few other electronic prospectors at the same time using this model of Garrett detector. A couple of the other prospectors tried to school me in getting the best out of it, but I could not persist long enough. I was too young and impatient in those days to learn how to pick the noise of a good target out from all the ground noise. I sold it to another prospector in Ebagoola who had more patience than me and who had successfully used one before. He told me it was by far the best detector available ... but I was just happy to get rid of the noisy beast of a machine, and he got a bargain. I got to thinking about Garrett detectors yesterday while looking for the booklet, and I was reminded about the famous story of how the Garrett Groundhog became popular on the Australian goldfields in the 1980s. There were a lot of guys detecting back then who had their wives with them in the bush, and many of the wives wanted a detector for themselves. Because the Deepseeker was so expensive, the husbands were reluctant to spend so much money on a detector that they thought would probably get little use. So a number bought their wives a Garret model which was the cheapest of the then Garrett range ... and that was the Groundhog. What they then found was that the wives were getting more gold than they were! Then the Deepseekers were put aside and the Groundhog became the detector of choice for a time. I was told at the time it was something to do with different frequencies of the two detectors, with the frequencies of the Groundhog better suited to the ground in Australia. But - maybe - it could have been because the Groundhog ran quieter. Then when Garrett started selling so many Groundhogs in Australia they rebadged the Groundhog and sold it as a detector specifically made for Australian conditions. I think it was called something like the A2B. I had even less success with the detector I had prior to the Deepseeker, which was my first ever detector. In the late 1970s there was a guy based in Newcastle who imported Compass detectors and he was all over the media promoting them as the detector driving the then gold rush. So, as I knew nothing about detectors, I believed the hype and bought a Compass detector from a mining supply shop in Sydney (where I was then living). But, rather than starting off cautiously in a new field of endeavour and trying detecting in a gold field close to home, I decided to go all in. I bought a Toyota Land Cruiser and headed to the Queensland goldfields with my brand new shiny Compass detector. I drove straight through for two days from Sydney to the Nth Queensland goldfield of Georgetown. And on getting to Georgetown I headed to the caravan park. Then, the very first person I spoke to when I got out of my Landcruiser said straight away ... "That detector is useless here!" And I soon found out he was right. I was the only one there with a Compass detector, which I was ridiculed for. Everyone else was using Garrett's and it was galling to see them leave the caravan park each morning and come back in the evening with smiles on their faces. It must have been a bit later when I bought the Deepseeker. And when I bought the Deepseeker I thought I could not go wrong this time as it was the top of the line detector that everyone else was using, and I must have made a good buy. Luckily I found that there were other means of gold getting to do in Nth Queensland other than using a detector. And a bit later I got into tin mining with a dredge, which I was successful at until the tin price crashed virtually overnight. Regards, Rob (RKC) . Detecting in Georgetown, North Queensland, in the mid 1980's. My Garrett Deepseeker MD in Nth Queensland ( I also had a much bigger coil!). My mining camp at Ebagoola goldfield. Another of my mining camps at Ebagoola. A woman friend detecting with a Garrett MD on the Georgetown goldfield in the mid 1980's. Abandoned miners hut, Ebagoola, North Queensland. https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/502x734q50/835/koe0.jpg Ebagoola, North Queensland https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/730x484q50/835/16q8r.jpg Georgetown goldfield.