Gold detecting - part IV

Zot · May 4, 2014 5:45AM

Continuing the story from my previous gold detecting posts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

It’s been a while since my last post on this topic.

I've been out detecting quite regularly, and accumulating more equipment.. I just realized I already have 7 different coils for the gold machine I have here(!)

I’ll start off with an update on the local wildlife, where my sightings now include e.g.

A Golden Orb Weaver spider, which happened to catch a prey just as I was about to take pictures. The small spider is a male. Encounters with these always freak me out a bit, as I tend to notice them seconds before I’m about to stick my nose into their webs.

Here’s another one floating in mid-air.. Can you find it?.. They’re rather large, and venomous of course.

A bobtail lizard. One of the few Australian animals that don’t stick deadly venomous fangs into you at lightning speed when you run into them. I like these.
This one is about a foot in length, maybe a bit more.

Now on to the good stuff:

In many areas I’ve had some success with “dumpster diving”, i.e. digging up a bunch of surface junk first, to get to the good signals down below.

Here’s an example: the little nugget was exactly under the piece of junk (a few inches down, smack right in the middle of the hole). I found several nuggets using this method, but it’s exhausting to dig all day if the weather is hot (and being used to Arctic temperatures doesn’t help!).

I haven't gotten around to getting one of those rare earth magnets to stick on the end of my pick handle. This would be a great help during these dumpster diving sessions!

Here’s a piece I managed to fish out from a very heavily detected area. It was in a tricky spot wedged against a tree. This one broke the 1-gram mark (most of my finds have been matchhead-sized 0.2-grammers..)

The general area where it was found:

This is my total so far. A few of these still need to visit the ultrasonic cleaner.

And again:

And again. 29 pieces, 9 grams in all.

I expect to spend at least some more time in Australia in the coming months. Still looking for that elusive multi-gram piece…. !

-Z

bronzemat · May 4, 2014 5:50AM

That spider is huge

Congrats on the gold finds though!

pcgs69 · May 4, 2014 8:55AM

Thanks for the pics. Man, I would be scared to walk through those woods. On a regular basis, the worst things we encounter here in New England are ticks, which aren't too bad if you find them on you quick enough. How deep is the gold usually?

ricko · May 4, 2014 7:54PM

Great pictures Zot, thanks for sharing..... those spiders are UUUUUUUGLY!!! Yes, I did find the one in the last picture. Nice gold... hope you find a big nugget...... Cheers, RickO