A new website, obviously released too early as it is not complete!!!
But here is the New Palmerville Station and prospecting choices!!
https://palmervillegold.com.au/
Buyer Beware
Some facts not easily obtained about Canibal Creek / Palmerville Gold Camp
The drive in from the PDR along White Creek Road is a great road but it has some massive pulls out of the the 30 plus creek and river crossings you do on the way in and if you are towing you will need a 4 x 4 to pull up some of them.
Google maps has you drive up a road about 300m short of the actual signed turn off so be advised, don’t turn left until you see the signs.
Once you arrive the check in is past the first camp site and at the small shack on the hill. Here you will be briefed on the camp. It does have drinking water and WiFi available from the first accommodation building you pass on the left as you enter the camp. If you want WiFi you must be camped near this building or drive to it when you want it.
By the way no evidence of the Bio Hazard wash was asked for upon signing into the camp??
You are directed to several bush camp sites areas and pretty much pick your own camp, contrary to the impression given when booking your visit??
We had booked in advance as advised for a 2 week stay and thought we would break our time there up by firstly doing a guided prospecting tour ( to get the local lay of the land ), a helicopter tour of the country and an indigenous cultural tour, all clearly advertised on their social media sites. We new we could not do 14 days straight prospecting so this was a great way to break things up.
Well, upon arrival and check in we were told that these were “not available yet “ and that was the end of it……
Having been advised of this we thought OK we will still stay for the 14 days.
Next we were given an A4 printed trilbite map ( see attached ) of the area and told we could detect anywhere in the areas shown.
Upon asking where would be a good place to start, Ben said anywhere from the big mine lease South and circled an area about the size of a 20 cent piece and said to try here. He explained that a “ new track”, singular, had been opened up to the south and we should head down there.
What Ben failed to tell us is that it is a minimum of a 1 hour and 15 min drive from the camp site and we’ll over 2 hrs if you want to get down south on track that I would rate as 4X4 intermediate to advanced in some places.
So we now have a minimum of 3 hrs each day traveling on some pretty tough track. Yes we could of elected to bring quads but others in our group were told no quads so they brought bikes only to find when they arrived that quads were allowed???
We spent one day getting right off the main tracks then walking 2-3 km only to find un filled detector holes every where, a sight seen for the next 7 days.
We went west one day cutting trees that had fallen over the poorly maintained tracks to access another area, only to find quads and bikes had been there and gone beyond the well signed closure of tracks. We even viewed a yellow Suzuki coming back under the wire one afternoon, I wonder where he had been???
On the property as of June, most of the grass is thick and 2-3 foot tall making swinging the detector extreamly difficult, a fact not mentioned anywhere or on any Blog?? I know they have no control of this but with the consistent rains NQLD are still having you would think they would give you the heads up to people spending a lot of money to get there.
As for the new track South, well as far as we could see it was an existing track that had had some minor gully work carried out in it recently.
We were amazed with the amount of fresh ( within 6 months ) un filled detector holes. After talking with people in the camp, it well and truly looks like the professionals have been in there after last seasons published windfall by many, and done very well.
We spoke with multiple seasoned prospectors who had in the previous year pulled multiple ounces of gold. Most of them this year were struggling to find grams. Some had been there for over a month for a measly 11 grams on our date of leaving, most we’re pissed off with the lack of new acces tracks as promised and the general lack of work that had been done opening up new areas for the season pass holder. I know of 1 seasoned pass holder who left after 3 days as he was so disappointed as to what had been covayed to him compared to actually what areas he could go into.
I will admit that we actually went into the seasoned pass holders area on our last day to see if it was worth paying the $3K to get into this area.
With 4 detectors on the ground for a minimum of 5 hrs each we came up with zero. What we experienced in this area was the same as in the non seasoned pass areas, hundreds of un filled 2-3 month old detector holes. We were absolutely in the right areas for the gold, it’s just the Professional Hoovers had been in there earlier???
The area itself
As a Victorian I can only say it’s like Black Wood on steroids. A second season prospector described it as the similar to the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea. The gully’s are so steep most of the time you can only enter from the either end which means you will be doing a hell of a lot of walking before you can detect as the easy gold has been taken on the ridges and slopes. The slopes are not for the faint hearted due to the angle. If you are not an extreamly fit and agile person, don’t go.
Another fact seemed to be over looked in all the info is that most of the rich gully’s have previously been worked by mechanical means right up until the 80’s and you are only really prospecting the scraps
After days of traversing the tracks looking for new areas and not finding any real notable gold and not being able to partake in the advertised activities offered Feeling quite bruised and batted from the 3 hrs a day in the car to and from the gold fields on the rough tracks that will do damage to every vehicle on them we decided to pull the pin a week early and head to another area.
I have since emailed Palmerville Gold twice requesting a refund of our second week on the basis of the advertised activities were not available that we had planned to split our prospecting days up with.
I have had NO response from them to date.
I feel this is a poorly run business with no real vision or structure and the only aim is to get you to sign up for a season pas, take your money and do bugger all for it??
They spend a lot of time on social media promoting the station, however it is my opinion that they need to spend more time on the seat of the dozer opening up the promised areas for prospecting ??
People are spending many thousands of dollars getting to the station due to all the hype but the realization quickly sets in that it’s just a lot of talk without the promissed work being done by the management
Don’t waist your money on this Joke of a station.
NZ hunter might struggle a little with only four days available as probably take several days just to get oneself orientated with the area.
