New to NZ and public area gold

Howdy folks. My partner and I are new to NZ from the USA. I’ve done a bit of detecting for relics and coins back home as well as prospecting for gold, fossils, and gems. We’re settled in the Nelson area at the moment, so if anyone is in the area and willing to show some yankee treasure hunters how things are done in NZ, please feel free to shoot us a message.

We have already had the chance to check out some of the public fossicking areas and found some nice flakes and pickers (see below and sorry about the photo quality, they’ll get better!). This is a great forum and I’ve been lurking for a while. I’m looking forward to meeting some of you folks on down the line.

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Howard valley gold? good luck.

We checked out Lewis Creek a few years ago. Did about the same. Haven’t made it to Howard yet, although we’re keen to try it out. My sluice is on the way from the states and I’m pretty excited for it to arrive.
Most of this gold was just with a pan and crevicing tools at Franz Josef and the Arrow although I was lent a sluice for a while at the Arrow.

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According to those wiser than I am you are only legally permitted to hunt for a few colours on a Public fossicking area or an eestablished claim…with of course the owners blessing.welcome to Paradise…the SS and Gestapo are alive and well in what used to be a country owned by it’s citizens but now…everything has changed.

Yep, that seems to be the case so it looks like I’ll be sticking to the public areas until someone is kind enough to ask me for a visit to their claim or I can figure out how to get a claim of my own. It’s rather straightforward back home, but new country, new rules I suppose.