This year’s Palmer Crystal & Craft fair was a great success. Along with the many tailgaters and stall holders, there were plenty of detector enthusiasts for the Competition on Sunday. This year there were 131 participants for the competition which is around 20 more than last year!
The Miners Den SA stall at the event was a hive of activity and a great place to discuss the events, rules and major prize, which was donated by Minelab, a GPX 5000 metal detector.
It dawned on me that this is now one of the premier events in Australia and brings in people from all over the country. It even makes regular travelers to the Western Australian goldfields stay back until the event is over hoping that they could be swinging a new GPX the field.
The two detecting sessions were expertly run and all operators enjoyed the atmosphere. It was good to see the number of juniors was up from last year; however I have made it my challenge to keep this number increasing to encourage the future of the industry.
The rain held off for both of the sessions and the swinging and digging was fast and furious. It’s one of the only times where you'll see a detector operator get excited about finding junk! 'Keep all your targets as you don't know what will win it' was the advice and sure enough, the least expecting person who found a tiny teddy bear figure, about 1cm high, was told he won the GPX 5000 detector. He couldn't believe it and looked around for the hidden camera until he held the box in his hands.
Other prizes were an X-TERRA 305 donated by Miners Den SA and a bunch of other gear from Coiltek and other sponsors. All in all it was a great weekend and a big thank you goes out to the volunteers from the Mannum Minerals club who every year donate their time in making this event a well oiled machine!
Hope to see you next year at Palmer!
Trevor Ferraresso
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