My daughters were on a school camp in Eastern Victoria (Warburton) last week and as a part of the activities they were shown how to pan then sent down to the river. To the camp owners, one returned with two nuggets around a gram each in the pan...
Because of the advent of metal detectors some years ago, I don't think creeks have ever been hit hard like back in the day. Some places are still full of the good stuff - or been refilled by flood waters and errosion, unlike our detecting areas that are getting harder to find anything.