My wife and I decided to go and check out a spot where we knew there were old workings but doesn’t get much of a mention in the northeastern part of the state. So, we packed the car, looked at Trilobite, and off we went. The place was never known for a detecting area but well known for panning small gold — but you never know.

So, we pulled up, had a look around as we do when we get to a new area, and then we were into it with the trusty old Minelab SD 2200 with a 14” Coiltek Elite mono coil attached. Lead shot after lead shot and more rust than you could poke a stick at — but I find that this is a good sign. Sounds odd, but it also means not many people have detected the area.

After looking around for about 30 minutes, I stumbled across another prospector’s hole. “Bugger,” I said to myself, “someone had beat me to it.” So, I swung around the hole and bang — a target under the leaf litter. After kicking the dirt around looking for the target, I kicked out a piece of quartz, still thinking it’s got to be junk in the ground. But to my amazement, I moved the quartz and… no noise. Hmmm, surely not. So I picked up the quartz, and I didn’t even have to swing it back over the coil — I knew straight away by the weight of it: it’s a gold spec.

As I looked closer, you could see the gold sticking out of it. It weighs 47 grams all up, and it has just under 11 grams of gold after an SG test. So, it goes to show — check your holes and the dirt you’ve removed, even if someone else has dug it out.

Happy hunting.