Prospecting / Gold detecting tours & training Victoria

We are wondering about taking a mine detecting tour in Victoria. Has anyone participated in these and if so was it worthwhile? We are about to purchase a Minelab 5000 and thought it might be a good introduction to gold detecting and a great way to spend a few days in Victorian bush....?

Hi M&A, welcome to the forum.

I haven't been on one of these tours personally but from what I gather they can be very insightful for not just newcomers but even more advanced users, I believe this is especially true for GPX 5000 owners given the sophistication of the machine.

Id say if you can afford it, it's probably well worth the money, and if don't take anything useful away from it, at least you've still got your few days spent in the bush

Cheers,
Nugget

hi Mick and Anne I don't do tours but depending on where you like in vic I may be able to show you safe places to go to find the yellow

ps have you been to whroo gold mine near rushworth vic its pretty amazing

Hello, thanks for the reply. No we haven't been anywhere at all in Victoria as yet.....however, we will be rectifying that very soon hopefully! We are trying to oranise to take a few days off and hop on the boat sometime in June. Will try to get to Rushworth if time permits.
Cheers!

Hi Mick & Anne, welcome to the forum.

I've never done a prospecting tour/tutorial as yet. I don't have a very good detector either...

1st lesson is to buy a GPS as well.

Once I hand over a wad of cash for a detector, I will definitely do some tours/courses - takes some of the guess work out of things.

There's tours around Bendigo I think. Also one of our members has some sort of classes that he runs - Diggerdude.

Good luck out there.

Mick and Anne,

Last month I took my son down to Bendigo to do a two day, one on one detecting course with Gold Prospecting Australia. My son Sam had never detected before and on the first day found two small nuggets.

As far as tours go, Ronda and Mark Hyde of GPA do tours in the Triangle in Autumn and Spring ( as well as training days) and in Winter they do Western Australian tours. I have done thirteen Western Australian tours with GPA and highly recommend them.

Cheers,

Jig.

Agree about GPA.

I did one to Mt Browne a couple of years ago. My first experience with prospecting and had a great time and found Mark and Rhonda great and informative hosts. Under Marks tuition I did manage to find gold as did everyone else on the tour.

As a result I am trying to now take detecting up as a hobby during my retirement.

The only trouble is that you need to book so far in advance as they are so popular and good

Rich

Hello again. Thanks for the input everyone. We have booked a tour for a couple of days in Victoria towards the end of June. We are really looking forward to this as it will be our first prospecting experience. Will let you know how we go! Be great to find a "retirement nugget"!!!

All gold is "Good" gold Mick & Anne....hope luck follows you around throughout the whole tour. Look forward to the feedback...Cheers Wal.

Hi Mick and Anne, I recently went on a Gold and Relics tour. They operate out of Clunes and Darren was excellent. I had a great day learning heaps about metal detecting and found a nice little 2 grammer on the tour. Darren was very free with his information. I haven't bought a detector yet so I hired a detector for 2 days after I did the tour and found another couple of small pieces during the 2 days that I went out. Once I knew what I was looking for it was easy. Cheers Pete.

Hi again! We are getting excited about our trip to Victoria in another week or so. As I have said previously we will pick up our minelab 5000, and have booked a couple of days with a tour out of Bendigo. We were originally only going to stay a further couple of days but now may have the opportunity to extend our trip and add another day or two. Would anyone be able to suggest possible sites around the bendigo area for us to go detecting please? We have a Landcruiser set up for camping and are fully self sufficient so we are happy to go to more out of the way places.

Can you guys recommend anyone in Vic?

We're new to the hobby and looking to get some hints and tips

Cheers,

Nic103 said:

Can you guys recommend anyone in Vic?

We're new to the hobby and looking to get some hints and tips

Cheers,

Click to expand...

http://www.goldentriangletours.com.au/index.php heard a good report on this bloke but looks fairly dear too. Should be a heap around the golden triangle you would think?

mbasko said:

Nic103 said:

Can you guys recommend anyone in Vic?

We're new to the hobby and looking to get some hints and tips

Cheers,

Click to expand...

http://www.goldentriangletours.com.au/index.php heard a good report on this bloke but looks fairly dear too. Should be a heap around the golden triangle you would think?

Click to expand...

Yep there's heaps around - just wondering if anyone had any good recommendations

I'll check out Golden Triangle Tours though - thanks heaps

Cheers

Has anyone done any of the gold detecting tours that can be done around the golden triangle.
We don't have a detector yet and so far have only done a trip to oallen and a trip to tuena, for sluicing, we have a Mackirks boss. We also or should I say Ian filled a couple of buckets up and we took them home to practise in the backyard.
Can't believe how small the flecks of gold can be !
I would like to try detecting and was wondering if it is worth while doing one of the tours.
Thanks for any info
Donna

Hi. You may see our other posts, but we did a tour through Bendigo Gold when we bought our Minelab 5000. It was absolutely worth the the time and money. We had never detected before so we were complete novices. We actually did find gold the first day! We learnt so much, and now we are hopelessly addicted. We would like to do more tours later on, in other areas. Best of luck!
Mike and Anne

Thanks Mike and Ann for the information, it is great to hear that you enjoyed and benefited from tour.
Good luck with your detecting
Donna

Hi,
As mentioned in other posts retirement is easing up on me and the intention is to go from pan/sluice to a ML5000.
I've done a search or 2 to look up previous posts on tour operators but not really much there.
Was wanting to do at least 3 with different people to see what their methods entail to give me the best chance of future success, no good having the thing if it can't be used properly and with confidence.
Was hoping to go with people in different areas as ground conditions can vary and what 1 bloke says is gospel in his area may and probably will not apply in others.
So, a couple of questions .....
Any recommendations for operators in differing areas ( most seem to operated witching the GT.
Was hoping to maybe try one in Ballarat, maybe around Bendigo and 1 in the Central GT
Has anyone been on one, what is/was the cost and do you have a contact.
I think Zakman has given previous info on a bloke in Dunolly but welcome other suggestions.
As it may be frowned upon by the Mods to recommend businesses I'd have no problem in getting your recommendations via PM ..... Unless they say it's OK to publish them.
As a thought if anyone has a 5000 and want a refresher or to tag along maybe we can get a couple of members attend.
Appreciate any advise that you can pass on,
Thanks, Tom

PM sent.

So I've been looking at doing a guided 'gold tour' for myself and my dad as an early xmas gift. We would be looking at the first weekend in October.
There seem to be a few people around who offer this sort of thing, some even guarantee you will find gold (are they that confident, or do they salt the ground?)
I've had a look at Gold and Relics (which would be convenient, as we are also based in Clunes) and Golden Triangle tours (more expensive, but guaranteed you will find gold).
Any other recommendations? Our main goals are to learn a bit more about detecting, maybe some good locations we can access and to convince dad to invest in an SDC2300 and hopefully find some yellow before I head overseas.