A customer recently came into BendigoGold to share his finds with us

It was a nice day and I decided to go detecting up higher where is was quieter.

 

I was walking around slowly with my Minelab GPX 4500 metal detector and started to pull up nuggets out of a small area, that I had been working at over a few days.

 

The nuggets weighed a total of 12 grams with 16 in total. The biggest nugget weighed in at 6.9 grams and was only 3 inches down.

 

I’m thinking about going back with my larger coil, due to my great success with these little ones.

 

Well done, Great Finds!

I recently came across some info on a long abandoned gold mining camp, or “village” as it was listed. It was hidden away behind some private property, and there was almost no reference to it in modern publications and maps that I looked at.

It was a long hike in on foot and when I first went to investigate it, without a detector, I found what I counted to be at least the remains of 15 or so miners huts. It didnt look like it had been detected before as there were many old bottles and stoneware items laying on the surface, so I was excited to race home and kit up for the exploration.

After an hour or so detecting I was surprised at how little amount of targets were to be found, even though it had not been detected. Some huts must have been occupied until at least 1905, but most items that I could date where from the 1850’s-60’s as it was originally a gold rush settlement.

There’s about 10kg worth of metal objects collected, but no gold items, and very little silver too!! Very surprising finds indeed, not what I expected at all.

The nicer objects and the 50 odd coins are shown from the village. It must have been very poor and/or the settlers had and lost very little in their stay there.

After having a couple of months away, I was excited to go do some relic hunting with the Minelab CTX 3030 in Central Victoria.

I chose a heavily mined area where I had found some interesting gold rush relics and early coins before. This was the site of a major alluvial gold rush in the early 1850’s, and which attracted gold seekers from many parts of the world.

I was detecting right beside where I had been before, finding the usual miners buttons, buckles and a few English pennies dating from the early 1800’s. I got a signal that suggested a silver coin. After digging it out I thought “another English sixpence” until close inspection revealed something different than I’d found before.

I always look at the dates, and I was shocked to read 1781 on this one. After some more detecting and a few more finds, I returned home to research the strange coin I’d dug up. I found that its a Spanish 1/2 Reale, Minted in Mexico City and this type was used in the Spanish colonies of South America until 1857. Its not a very rare or valuable coin, particularly in such worn, circulated condition, but I would think its a rare one to be dug up in Australia.

One can only imagine where this coin has been in its long life, and the journeys that it and its owner had while coming to the Australian gold rush.

One of the boys from BendigoGold has had great success with his new Minelab SDC 2300 metal detector.
‘Having purchased an SDC2300, I was very interested to see what it could find on a patch I had found back in the SD2100 days. After 3.5 hours, I had found17 small nuggets for 2.2 grams, plus 35 shotgun pellets. I was very impressed with these results, as I could no longer find anymore targets on this patch with my GPX 5000 and 8’’ commander mono coil. It’s exciting to know that anywhere I have found gold in the past, should yield more nuggets again due to the performance of the SDC.’

A customer recently came into the BendigoGold store to show us some beautiful gold nuggets he had found with his Minelab GPX 5000 metal detector. On the GPX 5000 he was running a Nugget Finder 12″ x 7″ coil.

The largest piece was found at a depth of about 5 inches and the smaller ones were found about an inch down.

I was studying an old map which showed considerable alluvial gold workings in an isolated area near Bendigo and decided to take a drive there to see if it had seen many detectorists.

The diggings were extensive and probably had a large population in the 1860’s. It appeared as though nobody had been detecting there so I switched on the Minelab CTX 3030 and detected around the diggings and it was surprising how much junk was around, and shallow.

After a couple of hours digging pocketfulls of the usual buckles and buttons, but nothing of great interest, and that it was nearing 40 degrees, I was ready to call it a day and head back towards my car when I heard a broad, high-pitched signal on the edge of a digging.

I could tell it was a large non-ferrous object and that it was down several inches. I began digging the rock-hard dry ground, using my Minelab PRO-FIND 25 as I went to keep me from hitting the object with the pick.

After approx 6-7 inches deep, the PRO-FIND told me I was almost right on it, so I proceeded to use my hands. I finally seen the edge of a large flat brass belt buckle. Carefully prying it out with a stick, I was excited to think it would be another Victorian era cricket themed buckle, but also wondering if it would come out broken or damaged, as many of them are. It sure looked intact when it was just out of the ground so I walked it back to my car and brushed off the dirt with an old toothbrush to reveal its detail. I sure was lucky with this one. Beautiful condition and it still has the clasps on the back. Another excellent goldfields buckle for the collection.

Quite a few ounces of beautiful Queensland Gold – found by one of our more enthusiastic Sydney customers with his Minelab GPX 5000 which he purchased from Miner’s Den Sydney.

There’s also a photograph showing some of the Chinese Coins that he found on the diggings that he visited.

The young prospector had already sold 4 ounces of the nuggets before he arrived with his remaining haul for us to photograph.