I first became interested in detecting whilst on a holiday from my home in Adelaide, South Australia several years ago. An acquaintance spent several months each year in Victoria with his then GP3000 prospecting. My wife and I stopped off at his camp for a couple of days and went out with him, watching and learning. Realising, that whilst still working, I would only have a few weeks each year to do this, I knew this was something for future retirement.
So, I've retired and a couple of years ago bought a VLF detector trying to keep the cost down. I spent four weeks in the "Golden Triangle" (GT) early last year learning as much as I could, using the detector without any success. That is, no gold, but plenty of nails, fencing wire and other rubbish iron. I began to wonder if I should give up prospecting and start a scrap metal business instead.
Further research told me that if I wanted to find gold, I would need a good detector, particularly, as most of the areas to prospect have had many detectors over them for several decades. So, I went for the best and bought the GPX5000 last November, did a training day at the authorised Minelab reseller in Victoria and a couple of more days playing with the settings on a goldfield (no gold finds, but plenty of lead shot and bullets). I also knew that I would have to wait until May this year for my next trip to Victoria.
So, trip planned, caravan hooked up and off to Victoria I go. I meet up with a guy from QLD and we camp in a State Forrest near Stuart Mill for 3 days. He found his first piece with a VLF (non Minelab) on the 2nd day of about 1gr. He had been in the GT for 10 days and commented that I had at least another 8 days to go before my first find.
We moved on to camp in the forest near Tarnagulla and on what was my day 5 were on the diggings at Wet Gully near Waanyarra and only 5 minutes after starting for the day, I got a target signal. I scraped the leaf matter with my boot and signal gone, "another bullet" I thought, but I thought I would check anyway. After picking up the signal again and halving bits of dirt, there in my hand is my first piece of colour, a nice shiny 0.2gr nugget, off the surface, without any digging. I halved his time and we had a laugh over a beer as I stirred him up about that.
Although only a small piece, it vindicated in my own mind, upgrading to the GPX5000. After parting ways with the guy from QLD, I moved on to Avoca and found 3 more pieces of gold, the last being a 0.8 nugget that was about 15cm in hard ground, for a total of 2.2gr. All finds were with the Minelab Commander 11" mono coil.
Mike - South Australia, Australia