Noob from Aspendale

Hi All, Fordy here. Have always wanted to do some detectoring and so recently raced out and bought an equinox 900 from Anaconda.
Originally from the Castlemaine area (used to live on Murphy St until age 5) then moved around and parents settled in Smeaton, just out of Creswick.
All gold country.
Have traveled up a few times on the weekend...day trips to Golden Point rd (Nimrod area), Blackwood near Yankee creek (almost got bogged last weekend) then traveled to Taradale out past the Primary school...found nothing as yet, someone had been scratching there recently though. Just a 5c coin from Blackwood near Simmons reef rd, and a lot of led balls.

I've got the app and am reading a lot on how to look for gold....I guess it just takes time.

Fordy70 said:

Hi All, Fordy here. Have always wanted to do some detectoring and so recently raced out and bought an equinox 900 from Anaconda.
Originally from the Castlemaine area (used to live on Murphy St until age 5) then moved around and parents settled in Smeaton, just out of Creswick.
All gold country.
Have traveled up a few times on the weekend...day trips to Golden Point rd (Nimrod area), Blackwood near Yankee creek (almost got bogged last weekend) then traveled to Taradale out past the Primary school...found nothing as yet, someone had been scratching there recently though. Just a 5c coin from Blackwood near Simmons reef rd, and a lot of led balls.

I've got the app and am reading a lot on how to look for gold....I guess it just takes time.

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G,day. Have a try on some of those big quartz reef dumps around Castlemaine for specimens. They've given a lot up over the years there. A sensitive detector like you have has every chance of finding something there on them. Careful on them though some of the broken quartz is sharp as glass.
Good luck.

So the Eq900 is good enough?
I've gone over some dumps around mines and cuts into the sides of hills. Blackwood was ridiculously rugged at times...lots of ferns and stuff, was hard to swing. These are specific quartz dumps? I'll have a look.
Dad reckons up Colles rd there's gold and out Moonlight Flat, but there's lots of bullets and cartridges there too from when he used to go rabbit shooting as a teen. My grandfather used to go panning in the creek there along Forest creek and used a find a little bit back in the day.

A few thoughts.
Not knocking the Nox, but I don’t think it would handle mineralised ground as well as a dedicated ground cancelling PI detector.
I remember when I last had a VLF machine and to get the best depth you had to turn off the discrimination mode and go into all metal mode. I don’t know whether that is possible on the Nox.
Also the areas you mention would probably have deeper soils than the other areas of the GT and you may be detecting in areas for rarer “floaters” rather than nuggets that have settled deeper over the eons which would probably the majority.
Unfortunately all the evidence points to the reality that if you want to find gold nuggets consistently you need a competent PI gold machine. The cheapest entry point would probably be something like a used 2300.

Hawkear said:

A few thoughts.
Not knocking the Nox, but I don’t think it would handle mineralised ground as well as a dedicated ground cancelling PI detector.
I remember when I last had a VLF machine and to get the best depth you had to turn off the discrimination mode and go into all metal mode. I don’t know whether that is possible on the Nox.
Also the areas you mention would probably have deeper soils than the other areas of the GT and you may be detecting in areas for rarer “floaters” rather than nuggets that have settled deeper over the eons which would probably the majority.
Unfortunately all the evidence points to the reality that if you want to find gold nuggets consistently you need a competent PI gold machine. The cheapest entry point would probably be something like a used 2300.

Click to expand...

Hi Hawkear,
Well, I went up to Paddy's Ranges on Fri, started at about 10:45AM till about 5PM, was absolutely knackered. Camped in the car at the Campsite, beer by the fire was nice. Following day, hit a few areas with old diggings, another 5 hours. The Nox900 was giving me targets 98% of the time with TID of 22 to 28...I'd dig and check, dig and check...until there was nothing...literally, so frustrating. I take it its the mineralised soil? Found a couple of old nails...piece of natural iron, zero bullets which I thought was strange...but none of the yellow. Have been looking at the SDC 2300 like you suggested....need to save up.

Fordy70 said:

Hi Hawkear,
Well, I went up to Paddy's Ranges on Fri, started at about 10:45AM till about 5PM, was absolutely knackered. Camped in the car at the Campsite, beer by the fire was nice. Following day, hit a few areas with old diggings, another 5 hours. The Nox900 was giving me targets 98% of the time with TID of 22 to 28...I'd dig and check, dig and check...until there was nothing...literally, so frustrating. I take it its the mineralised soil? Found a couple of old nails...piece of natural iron, zero bullets which I thought was strange...but none of the yellow. Have been looking at the SDC 2300 like you suggested....need to save up.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the follow up report Fordy70.
I really don't know how to advise you about using the NOX and maybe others could help with settings that might help handle the mineralised soil better.
But you live in a good area for beach detecting and from what I have heard the NOX could be a winner for you both in coin and treasure hunting as well as general experience and maybe help saving that bit extra for a PI.
Your experience reminds me of my own many years ago sleeping in the bush in my car or a small two man tent with my Whites Coinmaster VLF up at Dunolly and other places in the goldfields.
Living in Gippsland at the time those trips were long, lonely and generally fruitless, but I managed to keep my interest alive with beach detecting around Phillip Island and the Mornington peninsula with some good coin and jewelry hauls from time to time.

Freq: multi
Mode :Gold2
GB Track : On
Discrim: 0

likely to be be good, if not best settings in any Oz gold area.

Dont start your detecting career by trying to use Discrimination and only dig gold. It will NEVER work and you will lose valuable learnings.

As a beginner you need to start by digging every signal in each new area and building up an idea of what different targets at different depths sound like.

You will find that some iron has same ID as gold , as do some shot pellets and bullets. I have also seen a lot of 0.1g gold ID01

It is only when you have dug 20 pellets of ID 15 or whatever in a spot that you decide to skip that ID number in that spot, accepting that you are also skipping any gold of that ID.

Most gold is tiny and most is not on surface so you can decide to skip digging the screamers after digging 20 bits of tinplate. You then miss digging your Welcome Stranger but you dig 99% less holes.

Experienced detectorists often use this strategy but apply it strategically. They would dig a screamer in undisturbed shallow ground away from diggings but prob not in a mullock heap...your choice bearing in mind 90% of nuggets you will find will be under 1g and will likely sound softer than the trash as they will be 100-200mm down as opposed to a 10g bit of tin at 50mm.

Regardless, you will find 100 bits ot trash for every nugget. you need to accept that as part of the game.

Swing slowly with coil CLOSE to ground but not touching, listen well and dig lots.

Rinse and repeat x 1000 and you will get there.

best of luck

If getting a lot of false signals try raising coil 100mm off ground whilst swinging.

Should also try dropping Sensitivity say 5 points or more.

With either change you will then not see the smaller real targets but should greatly reduce false ones.

Its all a game of chances and you are better off finding just some of the real targets than all real ones and hundreds of false ones.