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http://www.pmav.org.au/stories-a-reports/triangle-gold

Still no luck. Large nails which look to possibly hold timber rail. I know one mine in this group still has the track intact. Bullet head and shells, plenty of old iron. I scoured the steep hillside which tested my knee and foot. My foot is full of titanium and registeres a signal all too often. Being removed soon.

I hate to distract us from the spirited discussion of ZED aftermarket coils and new gold detectors, but I've been working on a plan to spend a few months downunder detecting WA. I sold some gold to finance the operation and convinced my Baja detecting partner we need to get us some Aussie gold. Just so you know I'm not a idiot and going off half cocked here, I purchased the premium edition of Nurse Paul's primer "Yank's guide to plundering Aussie Gold". Some very helpful information..."when handling sharp digging tools, always wear flip flops". Or the timeless, "When drinking a few cold ones with the locals, the acceptable ratio is 3 to 1. Buy 1, drink 3, it makes them feel superior." What could possible go wrong with that kind of wisdom at my disposal? Yeah I know, $16,000 worth of detectors got stolen while he slept on watch, but that could have happened to anyone. He's matured alot since then. Seriously though, we leave May 19 and don't expect to return until my 90 day visa expires. Paul has in fact helped me get a handle on the geography, Ute selection and basic gear requirements. We'll be boondocking it, living on road kill and brown snakes with a case of Vegimite for emergencies. I've already purchased one of the new X-coils 17" for the Zed which will be waiting for me when I arrive. I had a sacrificial coil cable for the jumper connection since I destroyed the original 14" stock coil, long story, but apparently you're not supposed to drag that coil behind the Rokon at cruising speed down desert dirt roads for a couple miles. Who knew they were so fragile? Wore right through the plastic housing and exposed the copper windings, bummer. But, I've got me a $900.00 Minelab chipped coil cable so the glass is half full. Nevertheless, an adventure is at hand. I'll post updates and photos as opportunities present.

Tuesday I leave for OZ as it turns out now it is a scouting trip for those to follow. I'll still be there when Condor and crew shows up some place in the Triangle. I don't live on gold so I had to take a trip to find it. As a matter of fact I've taken a few in the last couple of months but I've come up 'short' on each of those trips. I've not had anything worth posting either. This time I went to Gold Basin again which is 6 hours for me. This trip started out with a nice conversation with a guy who told me about 'finds' he knew about and he had made. He warned me about a couple of things. One was the snakes. He had been bitten while reaching into a bush but said later it was a 'dry bite' so he survived without knowing the snake had hit his arm. The other thing he 'warned' me about was all the gold had been taken by the 7000s! He told me he was hunting in way out places now and had found good gold but not close in. Ok, both of these warnings will make me more ready for OZ. haha I left him and detected with the 800 first on a site that had been a loading platform for dirt to be processed. I've hunted near this site before but not with the 800. It has lots and lots of trash. My first good target looked like a penny (20 on the screen) and sure enough it was but it was a Lincoln. Ok, that was different. I remembered I had seen where someone had found a gold coin in the area this year so I kept looking. Not far from this penny I got a dime sound (25) and thought oh, great but then it was also a penny but a wheatie (1947D). That was a good start. Now it was time to hunt for gold in some 'worked' places. I was looking at the previous areas where gold had been found hoping to find missed or undetected nuggets. I've armed myself now with deep seeking settings! Nothing at the next several locations but I've had a good start. It was time to find some meteorites and a place to stay with the 4Runner for the night. Meteorites were tough also. I got a little one and then travelled to a different area. I got another one and just before driving off into the sunset I got a 90 gram sunbaker! The next morning I got up and searched around. I was looking down on Lake Mead. I looked in that area to no avail and then headed to known gold areas for me. I hunted and hunted and finally found a 1.3 g nugget to break the skunk! I was going to make a better story out of this but there are distraction here. haha Enjoy the pictures. In the collection picture I have an odd flat shaped nugget of some sort. Any ideas? Mitchel

We had a friend come by the studio with some opal samples she brought back from a friend of hers who has an opal mine in Australia. The pieces she brought this time over to the studio were small samples of Boulder opal. The mine is a 3 day drive from Melbourne and over 200k of that drive is off road into the bush a very difficult and somewhat risky drive she says requiring careful preperation and notice to the locals to come looking for you if you fail to come back out is also a good idea. This is a chunk of the local boulder opal, The next question on my mind was is there any gold????? I’m thinking Australia, minerals and gee I wonder and if so, is the owner finding any gold? She didn’t know and sent him a message asking because a friend was interested to know, he’s going to be visiting the US later this month and I invited them both back for a visit when he is here if they have time I’d love to learn more about his adventures. Anyway, my friend sent over some plctures I think might be of interest, seems there is a few nuggets to be found here and there along with the other goodies in the ground.

Hi Guys n Gals. I’ve never ran a detector but very much looking forward to it. I live in the Nth East of Victoria Australia with access to what was some of the richest gold fields. I have no idea as to what the ground is like but it would be a fair guess that it would be at least reasonably mineralised. I know i will be a beginner but i dont want to spend my limited budget on a beginners detector. I’m willing to do the hard yards with the likes of an intermediate detector. The areas that i would be concentrating on is Beechworth and the Buckland Valley etc, so the ground will have plenty of iron and the likes and mineralised. I will be working mostly around the mines on hillsides etc. I noticed a used Nokta Fors Core for sale so did a little research. Nice detector. VLF struggling in the mineralised ground or does the Nokta fair not too badly? A good used GP3000 is going to be twice the price and above my budget but i could work on that. Lack of descrimination would probably be an issue at these workings? Whites SPP? I’m finding it hard to get too much info on these but from what i have read they seem like a good detector. Because of the likes of the trash and mineralised ground, i’m finding it difficult to choose between the VLF and a PI. I could start with the likes of the Nokta and purchase the likes of the GP or SPP further down the road. Does the SPP come under another name or as an updated model? Thanks all. Al.

Hi, I just had to register and reply to this thread. I own a Fisher Gold Bug 2, a Gold Monster 1000 and now a Whites Goldmaster 24K. Ive also owned a Goldmaster Vsat, Goldmaster III and a GMT. Having used all of these, I have to say that the 24K isnt the most sensitive of the high frequency VLF's out there. Right now, the old Gold Bug 2 with the 6.5x3" is still king of the heap and the GM1000 is able to beat that under some circumstances. BUT, the 24K has the smoothest ground balance Ive ever used and rock-stable threshold. It finds deeper sub-gram gold than all of them using that 6.5" concentric coil. I had the opportunity to run side by side with a friend using a GM1000 and although he got 6 bits of gold to my 2, all but one of them was under .05, whereas my 2 weighed .4gm. I also found 22 bits of junk, versus his 4. All of this was from a patch that has been completely hammered over 3 decades. Last few times I used a GB2 there, I got nothing. Methinks the higher coil power and the matched concentric coil along with the XGB tracking make for a very powerful new machine for small gold. I am very keen to try the upcoming 6x3 shooter DD coil soon as the 10x5 seems pretty good on hotter ground here in Victoria. I'll keep you all posted with my finds. One thing I MUST say about the GM1000 in comparison though....some guys here are using them to great effect by ignoring the basic rule of reducing sensitivity to allow proper ground balance. They run them flat out at manual 10 sensitivity and then cannot even ground balance....but on quiet or mild ground, the digital audio of the Monster eliminates much of the noise and the tiniest gold can be 'plucked' from the pops, clicks and farts of the SAT adjustments and hot rock re-tunes.....but only by those people who have their 'ears tuned' to the sounds properly. Me personally, these noises are maddening and I rush back to the smoothness of the 24K and listen for the bigger, weightier targets. Stay tuned for results here folks!

Hello to all i managed to find a bit of time to share my experience and trip in the Goldfields.So here we go: I managed to escape Melbourne for 3 days as wife was working there and i was doing the driving.Was hot very hot and i understand now why there is time to prospect and time to stay in an air cooled house. Anyway as a result of a post on the forum i contacted Goldrat (aka Peter) and after some very good chat and instruction we met in Maryborough .The drive from Melbourne for me was epic as : 1)i loved the scenery 2) i get lost very easily (But thanks to Peter instruction and a capricious phone i reached my destination without problem). So we head up to Talbot for bnb and to pick up a SDC2300 complimentary of my landlord Neil.We then headed to our first spot ,and while Peter was narrating the tales of mountain of gold retrieve from the area i was taking as many pics as possible as this was completely new to me Peter found the first bit of gold using his faithfull Equinox with the 6".......for the setting ask him . My bnb road SPOT 1 Wasn't me!!!!!!!! Scoooooore Peter first gold ,he gave it to me lost it in my suitcase.......

Hello to all ! I may be able to sneak in my wife luggage in February when she will be training for her new Job in Australia .I believe she will be based in Perth.Is there any Gold rich field around there????? I dont want to stay indoor and i got the green light to go detecting. Any infos will be welcome. Thanks RR

The Poseidon Nugget’ was unearthed in the Parish of Waanyarra. The huge nugget weighed 953 oz gross and 703 oz net. Woodall and party found the nugget 10 inches underground, 2 inches above bedrock with much quartz. This find began the last of the big rushes to the area.[1906] On private land. This [Poseidon] was the last great alluvial rush in Victoria. 3000 were camped here in 1906 with store established catering for all the miners’ needs. One storekeeper was charged and fined for selling sly grog. The reef above and opposite the gully had been rushed in 1859, but this side neglected. It was nearly fifty years before John Porter testing the ground with a hand auger, found wash and sank a shaft onto nuggets. From its size, more large nuggets have come from this lead than any other in the world. 703 oz, 675 oz, thirteen others over 100 oz, nineteen from 50-99 oz, fifty two from 20-49 oz and two hundred and eight from 1-19 oz. ... the Premier awarded [James Porter] £500 for the discovery. He was the last man to receive a reward for the discovery of a new goldfield in Victoria.

Ok NursePaul touched down in OZ, picked him up on Saturday, but in his excitement to get over here he forgot his ports with clothes, Z, etc etc. no no regardless of what he says about Airlines, that`s my story and I`m going to stick to it. We are having a lot of trouble communicating, I don`t know what version of English you Yanks use but tis French to me for sure............ So here we are waiting for his gear coming via Pony Express-Cobb & Co and I`ve got the best excuse I`ve every had as to why I`m not finding gold.....................But the xxxx is good yes/no..............and we are sort working out sign language, although judging by the smoke coming out his ears I think we will switch to smoke signals...............

Victoria" Nice Dig! ?Ig

These "Blokes are Great! ? It's "Raw" but real" w lots of finds, ck their other vids for more. Enjoy! Ig

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-05/how-to-survive-in-the-outback/10463852

Cheers All. Been away all summer..... but going thru All the excellent Posts from the Forum I missed, That will take a few more days!You guys and gals are Amazing! Great Finds....here's a new one from My Mate Jay ! Enjoy!? Ig

I found this posted elsewhere I don't know if folks have seen it yet ? if so just remove it. Enjoy. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-10/rich-gold-seam-half-a-kilometre-deep-in-kambalda/10219576?pfmredir=sm

A comment I made on Jins post recently reminded me of how easy it is to walk over good sized gold. We are all familiar with the horrible loud screams detectors make over big surface targets. Sometimes the cause is obvious, usually surface rubbish such as a visible piece of tin or squashed beer can. Occasionally, when walking paddocks (which I mostly do) it turns out to be something useful, such as a lost spanner or fuel cap from a tractor - I have even found a grease gun lying concealed in the grass. These items I always return to the grateful landowner. More commonly, however, it is something useless like an old horseshoe, worn out cultivator point and/or the sheared bolts which once held it to the plough tyne. After digging a number of these the temptation to keep walking (with ears still ringing) becomes ~almost~ irresistible. Back in the Minelab SD2200 days I had permission to work a large Victorian property located on the Tarnagulla granite pluton to the north of Dunolly. This had a number of unworked shallow Tertiary palaeochannels crossing it, on one of which I located a 7 oz patch. Mostly the gold was smallish and reasonably deep, but the same location was also littered with shallow shotgun shells. These were very loud and nearly drove me nuts, and in my frustration I ignored one outlier - - - Fast forward a number of years and, armed with later technology (GPX4000) I decided to check the patch once more and - - - WHUMP/SCREAM - - - greeted my ears over that same target. I kicked the dirt in annoyance - and then spotted the 70 grammer I had ignored years earlier: I had foolishly made the assumption that all the gold in that patch was deep and small, therefore loud shallow targets had to be junk - overlooking the possibility that something once deep could have been ploughed to the surface - - - I kept it to remind me of the old detecting maxim: "Dig your targets"

Two of us made the 5 day trip from eastern OZ to the Western Australian goldfields for a 8 week detecting trip.(armed with 7000,s and SDC) We targeted remoter spots that are not really on the radar. We invested in a pile of permits and researched lots of available ground spots. Lots of walking and lots of barren gullies and creeks...... but occasionally we found the odd gully or slope not touched by a detector that yielded some nice runs of gold. We went 50/50 with our finds, sharing is the way to get a bigger tally when 2 or 3 of you (of equal ability) spread out searching large areas. All up we shared 45 ounces between two of us. There are many ugly specimens not pictured and we will have a big crush and smelt day soon. Cheers RDD

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-45468159

“Australia’s all-time record annual gold production (314 tonnes) … might well be exceeded*,” said Dr Sandra Close, from mining consultancy* Surbiton. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/kids-news/australia-set-for-record-gold-haul-in-2018-as-mining-booms/news-story/0f985c566f657751313c4a5c590c0cc1

Last month, Reg Wilson detected this pretty 50 gram colour in pipeclay at about 20" with his QED: Last fortnight, while we were detecting a remote area in the far west of Victoria with limited success, He also scored the Edward 7th medallion (above) The week before, while working together he scored a Chinese coin (no image) and this naval button. Any speculation as to nationality welcome: During the same time period, apart from some gold, I managed to score enough munitions to start a military campaign Now, despite many decades of detecting goldfields, I've never found a Chinese coin. How come some people find interesting stuff while detecting? Not holding my mouth right perhaps - - ?

Unfortunately, nothing much to brag about this winter . The weather, in sharp contrast to last year, was wet and miserable and all the properties targeted were under crop. Anyway, enough excuses. Managed to scrounge an ounce reworking last years shallow leads which were now free of long grass, allowing the coil to run at least 4" closer to the ground. The three rough bits were detected by Reg Wilson and I on an excursion to a patch of forest way out on the western edge of Victoria's gold bearing zone. The larger 5 gm piece (found first by Reg) got us excited but only had two more small companions. All found with the very latest QED which Howard graciously supplied for testing. The unworked shallow lead discovered last year and I reworked this year. Reg and I recovered many ozs off it last year, including 19 and 53 gram pieces. It begins at the small ironstone hill in the background and extends for well over a kilometre with the gold thinly scattered along its length. Looking down the lead the other way. It runs directly down the centre of the image and (hopefully) beyond the distant tree line onto the next property currently under crop. Detail of the rough 5 grammer:

The five cent piece is the smallest coin in circulation in Australia now and most of my photos where I have used a coin for scale I have used a 5 cent and the creature on the coin is the echidna. In the 7 years I have lived in Victoria I have only ever seen maybe a dozen echidnas, but what makes this guy so special is this morning he was in my back yard.??? The half grammer came from Cockatoo Bush a couple of years ago, but I have seen way more half grammers than echidnas. ? Dave

I’ve taken the equinox underwater with the Hungarian headphones twice now and I think I’ve experienced the best and worst scenario for the equinox. Firstly I went into a popular rock pool which I’ve detected successfully with one of my Pulse Induction machines (ATX) with decent success although I did ok, I had to greatly reduce sensitivity and increase pulse delay for it to be stable but still it was enough to find about 60 coins and a few rings in this small pool HOWEVER, the equinox was very very unhappy in these conditions and struggled to signal when the coin was placed on the rocks which was 2- 3 inches on our 10c coins (which is very similar in size and conductive to a nickel and therefore general gold ring territory) but when detecting purely through salt water it was capable of 7-8” on the same coin (just estimating but it was MUCH more than over the rocks) I messed around with sensitivity, discrimination, different modes (was using beach 2), sweep speed, swing height, ground balancing with tracking on and off, recovery speed as well as testing to see if the test items would register in all metal (if they came up as iron) to no avail, I don’t know what kind of rock it is but detectors clearly don’t like it. Next outing was a sandy beach with sandstone rocks and clay base which the detector functioned adequately over. I only used beach 2 and found recovery speed 4 is good because swing speed is slower under water so theoretically gives more depth, the sensitivity couldn’t really be run over 14 (I was 2m deep in salt water) at this location apparently but 10c targets were recoverable from 8” The Hungarian headphones aren’t very loud underwater (even to my 24 year old ears) which seems to be a theme with the equinox so I believe it COULD be that the 3.7V lithium battery is insufficient to run these kind of Piezo’s but I’m far from an expert. Anyway, the nox went well and found some smaller than usual gold pieces ? Today’s treasure:

This year, 2018, I'm working thru the year to pay up on last years not so great stab at a golden prospects in Australia last year, 2017. It was a great trip, always is, but a lot of little factors kept me gold poor *which I use to pay for food, fuel and amenities* so I leaned on the credit card a little to hard. Hahh! No one ever said I'd get rich but ehh~ One can dream by the camp fire.~~ Another driving factor for this post is that my email does not like to send pictures so this is for you all who have asked "Where are the pictures?" when I tried to send them. Well that aside Its Always A Good Go down under. I stayed mostly in the region of Kalgoorie last year, hard hunted land that, so I could be of help and hang around with my mates in Coolgardie while they fixed up a new caravan and ute. The gold was small and hard to come by but I still got a few ounces in littles from the EL's I applied for, and yes sent the reports in for, but in all here are a few good days on the scales : And here are what most days went like. I only had a few days streaches during the weeks out bush where I caught the skunk... but I entertained myself otherwise ? I did find one small meteorite but it chose to find the hole in my pocket instead of coming home with me. Bugger. But while I was out and about I decided to look for another mineral I knew occured in the region were I was and took a few days driving the fence lines to find it. Chrysoprase. Never did find the mine that my mate pointed me towards but I did find an area that had the right indicators, what is called white and blue chrysoprase and chalcedony, and on stopping there I took a couple of days to speck around. I was finding mostly low grade stuff, the above picture, but found one good bit with just the tip sticking out like an iceberg: Among other interesting rocks like this one, semi-crystalline quartz with some nice shiny bubbly limonite and from another area of flats a fulgerite, solidified lightning strike: So my rock hounding itch was scratched ? Now camp is always a treat in the mornings and evenings but I also mentioned I kept myself entertained on days when I was not finding much. Aside from just enjoying nature and walking Kays getting no where on the gold a few days of yabbie fishing made for a great reliefe after catching the skunk. I visited various dams nearby and treated myself to a Yabbie feast on many evenings. So all in all a great time, good eats and nice finds. If you want to go my suggestion is : Make a Plan and stick to it. You wont be dissapointed. There were a great many other things that occured but like I said, a short story. Regards and go live the dream. Next year who knows..... I'm thinking opal or sapphires myself with a little gold and yabbie. Thanks for reading, DD