Victoria Aussie Gold Trip

Gold Fever Show and Tell
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Teamed up with @PablosGold and visited his bro’s place in Ballarat to use as a base to explore the surrounds detecting for gold for 2 weeks. Just back…

First tiny picker found:

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How the pros do it:

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A true Aussie prospector in his natural environment around Maryborough:

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Caught up with the friendly accommodating (literally) @Hobosgold1 who I’d previously met on a WA detecting trip back in 2012. Check out his YouTube channel HOBOsGold for more Aussie gold goodness. Thanks again for looking after us mate - very much appreciated!!

The biggest bit I found on the trip:

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Also accidentally found a geocache in Creswick forest while detecting, and bonus - found another bit of “fly shit” just below it:

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Of course, had to add a note to the log book, last entry being about a year previous.

It’s getting bloody hard to detect gold, the sum of 2 weeks:

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If you look really carefully at the big bit of quartz you’ll see a tiny bit of gold. Just got to decide what to do with it now - dissolve the rock away, smash it up, or just keep it as a big paper weight.

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I’d like to add, the highlight of the the trip was having lunch in the Bush in Creswick… Gav decided to sit directly on top of a bull ant nest, he has now invented a new dance called The bull ant shuffle, but looked more like he was tripping out.
Unfortunately I come away with zero gold except for panning half a gram at Sovereign Hill, but come up with a few relics, best find was a 2ft miners pick head from the 1800’s and a small Chinese soy bowl the size of an egg cup.
Great trip all the same.

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These babies are an inch long and aggressive (expand photo)

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bull ants??? Found out the hard way how much they can hurt !!! Meat ants suck aswell

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Inchmans, a species of bull ant. Not super aggressive unless you disturb their nest. Pretty common throughout the goldfields.

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Or stand close to the nest as I discovered about 3 or 4 times while being distracted wafting the detector around! :stuck_out_tongue:

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my old boss in WA would pull up in a paddock next to a nest and call ya over for a yarn… no one would look down first and hed waffle crap for 30 seconds then start laughing and tell ya to look down. great joke aslong as it not you standing in them lol

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I got signals two times that I had to dig in nests, that was interesting! Lead shot both times :frowning:

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