Reg Wilson

DDs the SD 2000 was a mighty machine, and in my opinion is as good as any on big gold. I was never a fan of the 2100, but liked the 2200 a great deal. After the SD series the later machines were more suited to smaller and smaller gold. There will still be big pieces to be had, but sometimes you need to use a bit of lateral thinking, and actually prospect some of the less famous areas, as there are big slugs still hiding in places as yet undetected. This is especially true of many places in Australia. I recommend research. Get off the beaten track.

Last year I picked up a 27 oz in an area that had seen practically no detecting.

This reminds me of a previous large 'Californian' nugget that Mr Kagin was involved with.

Authenticated, and sold for us $460,000, it was found to have come from Australia. I wonder where this one came from? 

One can't help but be sceptical. Nuggets of that size were very rare in California in the old days, and the chance of finding one today would be a real long shot.

These people have form, so my guess is that they are up to their old tricks.

DODGY!!!!! I smell a rat.

I have one and like it. Weren't these the last Australian made Minelab detector? 

Good grief. Not exactly an easy exercise.

Time for another painful confession.

After once again being the 'bridesmaid' at Smythesdale I decided to give Wedderburn another try. I had enjoyed prospecting that country ( actually I was fossicking at that stage, and had a lot to learn about prospecting ). I detected Sugarloaf, Blacksmiths gully, Garibaldi, and Mosquito, finding bits at all spots, but nothing over an ounce. Other detector operators seemed to be having better luck than me.

Poring over a map of the area, I found myself looking at that same Beggary hill area, even though I knew that by now it had been well looked at. The next day found me back at Beggary hill and it certainly had been looked at. There were people camped there and still looking, so I continued along the track to an area called Silverdale.  The old timers had surfaced and shallow shafted this area, and although the signs were that they had found gold in this area, there were no 'tourists' to be seen, so I set up camp near a big century plant. ( a variety of succulent) I liked the look of this spot, despite the amount of ironstone.

Bright and early the next morning I stated swinging the Garret Deepseeker that I was now using. I was picking up a few pieces despite the noisy ground, finally cracking my first bit over an ounce.The detector was moaning and groaning over the ironstone making for very fatiguing progress, and after a day my ears were ringing. The next day yielded nothing so I upped camp and moved on.

A few weeks later I learned that 'The Pride of Australia', an eight kilo nugget was found by an old guy using a Whites detector. It was found at Silverdale near the century plant.

 It was sold to the State Bank of Victoria and was on display in the Victorian Museum from where it was stolen and never recovered in 1991.

Sorry mn, but I've no idea what I may or may not be missing. How can anyone know such things unless they try several different options, and then scrape with machinery to see what they've missed, and at what depth. Even that may not be totally accurate.

I find that the 25'' Nuggetfinder runs very smooth on my QED, and has lots of depth as well as good coverage. It is extremely light for a large coil. The coils we ran on the PI protos were 20" DD and were real 'wrist breakers',

Don't worry Jin, I'm not angry at JR. I just promied that I wouldn't let him forget. It's only a little joke between us.

jin, very helpful is JR. Get him to tell you the story of how he advised an old  farmer on just how we knew where to find gold , and how successful that farmer became. And he might just tell you how much gold that cost us. 

Getting a few white whiskers.

Redz, no mate. No big bits found with the sled, but it is a great tool for eliminating a large area in a relatively short time. Diesel is the way to go as far as lack of interference is concerned. The alternator will cause interference, and that is why it must be disconnected while the detector is running. Four stroke engines are no good at all, as they need spark to run, and that causes havoc with the detector. We once tried a Faraday shield and various suppressors with no success, although VLFs are not as susceptible to engine interference as pulse induction.

Jin, mate you're getting soft. "Luxury". "When I was your your age I slept in a hollow log and ate lizards for breakfast". (raw)

Back to the gold I have missed.

When the hand of faith turned up, my mate Ian M spun out and said , "that's it. All the good gold is gone". He gave up detecting and bought a small sluicing plant, which he operated around old puddling dams, finding 'fly poop', and getting his blood sucked out by leaches. I persevered with detecting, changing my Whites to a RB7 Bounty Hunter Red Baron, which I quite liked, because I hip mounted it, and the discriminator worked well. I worked alone and with a partner occasionally. I became acquainted with the goldfields closer to my home in Geelong. Rokewood, Illabarook, Happy Valley, Scarsdale, and Smythesdale, where I finally started to hit regular gold.

I found a spot called Wreby's gully, where the ground had been open cut, shallow shafted and surfaced. There was a large company (Boral ) that had a gravel extraction  quarry that in part encompassed old diggings, and nearby I found a rough and rarely used track that wound off the nearby sealed road into the area. Shallow ground was yielding me small bright colors, and although it was scrubby I was getting what I classed as a good result.

On arriving one weekend morning I couldn't help noticing that the track had been a lot more used than previously, and there were a couple of cars parked in the bush where I would normally park. Two guys were drinking coffee when I pulled up, and greeted me. "I think we are a bit late mate", one of them said. "Ay ", was about the only response I could come up with. They then went on to explain that an old guy had just further up the gully found a piece almost a hundred ounces using an early Whites detector. It happened just a few days previous.

"Not again" I thought.

It was stated that a buyer was sought. I have a potential and rellable buyer who recently bought a good sized nugget from me and is looking for more. If interested, contact me.

Redz, while I'm waiting for the rain to stop, I'll tell you what I can about sledding.

The first sled I built was a VLF using the GT16000, but I cannot claim to have built the first one . That honor goes to Craig Hughes, one of the original Minelab team, who towed a double D coil powered by a GT15000 behind a 3 wheeled Honda at Wedderburn, at what Ian Jaques called the Telecom paddock, near the 'potato diggings.' ( Ian called it that because that's where he went to find the gold to pay his telecom bill each time it arrived ) Against all odds it found a small color, and convinced me that the idea had some merit.

The coil I used was a large mono, built by another of the original Minelab team from Adelaide Uni. His name has slipped from my memory for the moment, but he was their coil man back in those early days, and a real nice bloke. Testing it at Rokewood turned up a six ounce piece. I eventually sold that coil to Miners Den in Melbourne.

I built a PI system when the 2200d came out, using a Polaris diesel as a tow vehicle, and a big mono coil built by John-Hider Smith. The diesel was necessary because a 4 stroke played havoc with the electronics. One needed to isolate the alternator via a switch to avoid the same problem. In WA John and I experimented with a Jim Stewart double D coil, but the target response was far to slow. Mono is the way to go. I still have this set up and it can be used with any ML PI or any machine that can be fitted to a ML coil connection. I am curious to see how it will go with a QED because the QED has really fast target response. Using a ML PI, targets as small as a .22 slug are easily heard.

 Hope this has been informative, and not too far off topic.

PS maybe Steve might see fit to start a new thread. It's up to him.

Look forward to catching up Mal.

Glen Sampson found more nuggets over 100ozs than anyone I have met or have heard of. The list is unbelievable. Just ask John at the Tarnagulla pub about Glen's finds.

Steve, I now consider myself retired. I cannot draw a pension as I have too many assets, but as I only find a fraction of the gold that I used to, and any gold that I now find can be classed as a 'windfall', and as such is not subject to tax. In any case, tax on gold is only due upon sale, and only if that exceeds the tax free threshold. Prior to 1991 gold was tax free here in Australia. In 1990 the government assured the gold industry that rumors of an imminent tax were unfounded. Knowing what liars politicians are, I immediately sold all the gold I was holding and invested it in land and other things. ( Including 2 Porsche 911 Carreras and a new Harley ) Sure enough in less than 12 months we had a gold tax.

In the early eighties gold was fetching around Aus $800 per oz but slowly fell back to around $500 where it remained for some years before rising in recent times. I sold very little gold at the early high prices, because at that time I was only a part timer, but by the time we hit the Orange Roughie patch it was $660 an oz. I tried to find a buyer in Australia for the Roughie for 2 years, during which the gold price had dropped to around $500. What I received for the Roughie was even less due to an agreement which was not honored. What happened to that nugget is well documented history.

After the gold tax was introduced I paid tax on income as with any other form of business. The way the gold from the 'Unfair advantage' team was divided was and still is confidential, but the gold was sold for the highest price we could get from any given buyer at the time.

 Should the price collapse, I think a certain number of people would still seek gold, as many do not need to sell it for income, but simply enjoy the challenge of finding it.

Steve, point taken.

No Jonathan, I do not forget so easily, and I would remind you that I have been in this game a bit longer than you have, and have had a fair amount of experience with larger nuggets.

You have conceded that the ground in Queensland is generally not as noisy as in Victoria, hence the fact that you can run your 7000 in more sensitive settings than we can here.

40 ozs. 6 inches. Come on.

What's the chances that a free 7000 is on its way to Queensland. At six inches it would blow your ears out.

egixe4 Was that the one found by Glen Sampson?

egixe, that's nothing. I missed a 250oz at Clover gully found by' Kiwi Russell' Barker. (sob) But John missed it too.

JR, at least you didn't teach Harry how to find gold!!!!!!

Jin that area was dozed and flogged but yielded very little. John, Ian and I went there with the protos, and John got a 35 oz bit that is in the album. Page 1.