I recently found a group of old gold diggings in the Greater Bendigo area which upon inspection didn’t appear to have been detected before, or at least not recently, so I was fairly keen on grabbing either the GPX 5000 for gold, or my CTX 3030 for the relics left behind by the old miners.

I fired up the GPX 5000 with a mono coil just to get an idea of the extent of the metal objects laying around, and immediately I ascertained they had not seen a detector before due to the high volume of rubbish targets. It was then I decided to use the CTX so as to discriminate a majority of the unwanted junk targets.

Within no time I had a pocket full of old miners buttons, belt buckles, brooches, and various other lost personal items. These diggings would have most probably been worked in the late 1850’s to early 1860’s. Here are some of the many coins and other items found with the CTX at this site. Chinese and European coins were found. The tailings heaps would most probably contain a few pieces of missed gold too, which is a job for the GPX 5000 another day.