What Made You Get Into Gold Detecting?

Health scares certainly made me change my priorities & thinking Jaros. Nothing is guaranteed & I am damn sure I am going to enjoy life as much as I possibly can when I am able to get about.

there is nothing more relaxing than sitting beside a creek with a pan or a fishing rod in your hands

Although I don't actively do much gold detecting these days, my first exposure to the "gold fever" was a school visit to the former George's Gold Mine in NSW - that pretty much had me hooked panning and detecting much later on in the Adelaide Hills. Also probably didn't help that I ended up working in gold exploration for most of my working life.

G'day

Like I said I have always been keen to be in the outdoors and scratching about and have done it all my life, but a thing my eldest sister told me made me think about why have always been so interested in these activities, she said it in the genes?, and then went on to tell me that my grandfather and great grand father were both Welsh gold miners, and my old man was a crow as well and anything shiny was brought home, he could see value in things that others would ignore, and so as a kid I was exposed to his collecting of this and that, sounds all to familiar to how I am as well :awful:

cheers

stayyerAU

I can relate Stayyer. Seem to have picked up a lot of my late dads habits & use his sayings a lot. Guess the apple fell close to the tree.

My hatred of golf.

We moved to regional Victoria ten years ago and expected to have a better work/life balance...including playing golf like all my family and lots of mates.

Now the inability to travel outside of the state or country had me contemplating picking up golf again...yuck...but I wanted to get outside, so bought an SDC

I used to be a member at Warragul Golf Club sawdan, but was not great at it. Could not hit a barn off the tee, but my short game was ok. Trout fishing is my first love & along with gold detecting they can both share my devotion.

When we can get out again, that is!

fwdoz said:

was not great at it. Could not hit a barn off the tee

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haha I can hit it a long way...except the direction of the hole

hi all
my experience was going out to steiglitz gold panning in the creek lucky enough to meet old roy trotter 3rd generation family from steiglitz
he would give me tips to look out for and also he would grab a pan and his favourite saying was bet you london to a brick there will be gold in the pan .later on i bumped into fred middleton who sank last shaft at steiglitz going down 90 feet of solid rock thats when i got the detector bug watching fred use his machine and always found gold with it .and best of all pulling up a seat in the bush so quite you relax and not a care in the world

I got into dredging for gold in the late 1980's weekends, did pretty good locally a few ozs, mainly shirttail creek, did that off and on with my two young sons for yrs, then came the dredge ban in Calif,, so I took up nugget detecting around 2013 with detectors as well as some drywashing. I had coin/jewelry detected for yrs starting in the 1970's so was right at home nugget detecting, have a love for camping in the outdoors as well, and trout fishing too.

That was good fortune to run into such knowledgeable local people geelong guy; these are where a short time with them is gold in itself.

I'm with you on the trout fishing mxt sniper; it is my first love, but it has a challenger in gold detecting.

Gold layful:

Prospecting is great excuse for a grown man to splash around in a creek like a kid - exploring this, uncovering that , pretending that you are boldly going where no man has gone before...

If you do that with a fishing rod, detector or pan in your hand then its all cool - if you did it with nothing in your hand then most folk think your loony

Gave it a try out of interest and intrige and love it ever since and made alot of mates and friends over the years too. Been doing it since around 2008.

This has been an interesting time in the West , lots of FIFO guys n girls couldnt fly home during COVID so alot of us just went bush , i did 4 months and a week off , then another 5 weeks , on my second week off now and borrowed a mates ute , rented a detector and giving it a crack around Karratha.

This is my second day with the SDC and so far only getting bullets and pull tabs but if i am getting junk then nobody else has detected here for a long time i reckon.

Is there any way to send messages between members here ?

Eng888 said:

This has been an interesting time in the West , lots of FIFO guys n girls couldnt fly home during COVID so alot of us just went bush , i did 4 months and a week off , then another 5 weeks , on my second week off now and borrowed a mates ute , rented a detector and giving it a crack around Karratha.

This is my second day with the SDC and so far only getting bullets and pull tabs but if i am getting junk then nobody else has detected here for a long time i reckon.

Is there any way to send messages between members here ?

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You need 10 posts up first mate

7.62marksman said:

Eng888 said:

This has been an interesting time in the West , lots of FIFO guys n girls couldnt fly home during COVID so alot of us just went bush , i did 4 months and a week off , then another 5 weeks , on my second week off now and borrowed a mates ute , rented a detector and giving it a crack around Karratha.

This is my second day with the SDC and so far only getting bullets and pull tabs but if i am getting junk then nobody else has detected here for a long time i reckon.

Is there any way to send messages between members here ?

Click to expand...

You need 10 posts up first mate

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thanks marksman , thought it must have been some kind of secret club :lol:

To get rich of course.

I have been an exploration driller since I was 18,

I was sinking beers out Kalgoorlie out front of the caravan after work bout 3 years ago unlaced the boots and bloody hell hear is a 4gr sun baker at my foot,

Sent the offsider in the next day to get me a detector, hooked, now I pan and snipe ,

Geez Digga, not many could say a piece of yellow at their feet like that got them started. Someone was looking out for you!