What inspired you to get into prospecting ?

[Hiluxlou]

I was introduced to gold prospecting through a mate of mine , I have always been into my freshwater fishing and later on 4wding and a mate that started coming on our trips introduced me to prospecting. At the start I thought I'd have a go but had never really got into it , he showed me the basics, panning , reading a stream etc etc and from there I was hooked . That was 3 years ago and now fishing has taken 2nd place to prospecting , so tell us what inspired you to start prospecting and how long you've been at it.
Cheers
Luke

 

[DrDuck]

When I was a kid I was always interested in reading about the bush, lapidary and rocks and minerals. I borrowed Ed Waller's very entertaining book "And there's Gold Out There" from the library and enjoyed it thoroughly, but it was not until later in life that I was able to put the interest into practice.

The book is well worth seeking out, being a semi-autobiographical novel and part mining manual set in the south coast of NSW prior to WW2.

 

[Jaros]

I grew up in Noble Park, near Dandenong. We had a creek running in front of the house 1301 Princess Hwy. Noble Park. It's where Heatherton Rd. cuts the highway. It has been lost to the freeway system now. I also like the bush, the creek had eels, little fish, frogs snakes there, all of the normal things you get in a stream. I made bows and arrows , fishing rods, kites, billy carts, (we had a great street Ryder St. running downhill beside us.)
I was always in the creek doing something, building rafts etc. It seemed to all that i loved the outside life. I did, i loved it.
When I was 18 and went on my 1st fossicking trip to Walhalla in Gippsland and got the bug. I don't have to find gold to love fossicking. It's just being out there in the wilderness enjoying the smells of the bush and campfire cooking and noises of bird whistling in the trees. I was in the Gould League of Bird Lovers at primary school and learned a lot about Australian bird life and habits.
I love the bush my dog loves the bush and my wife loves me loving all of this at the same time.
A bit of Gold helps a little, it's the peace i love the most.
Jaros

 

[Metamorphic]

 

[LC76]

I worked for Nugget Finder a few years ago.
Nothing important just placing stickers on coils and a lot of soldering.

Saw customers coming in talking to Rohan showing him big lumps of gold.....after seeing that there was no way i was not getting into detecting.

 

[Colmaca]

 

[TheFossickingKid]

I got into prospecting like this: we were at a mates place at Hill End and he has a garage and has a star picket to keep the doors on the garage open. Anyway we were packing up to go inside the house. So dad pulled out the star picket to close the doors to the shed and he pulled the star picket up out of the ground and there was a gold nugget sitting at the end of the picket. And that's what started it all for me.

 

[Oldfella]

For as long as I can remember I have always had a fascination for gems and unusual rocks, but what got me into prospecting for gold came about when I was around 10 or 11. I remember waiting by the car in Gulgong whilst Dad was in the hardware store, it was just after rain and I was looking at the ground and something caught my eye. I picked up the small object and showed Dad when he got back, he said he thought it was a small gold nugget so he took me to an old bloke that he knew to show him the find. Yep, it was gold alright, not a fortune but enough to get me well and truly hooked

In my early years I experimented with my own sluice designs and set these up on one of our dams on the property that we owned. I would bring home bag loads of wash from various mullock heaps around town on my pushbike and run these through my sluice. I found some reasonable gold doing this

Cheers

 

[Jaros]

Ah that's great, you have a great childhood memory of being "able" to do these things. The kids today don't seem to want to leave their ipads or smartphones or else they suffer a form of separation anxiety.

 

[Goldtarget]

I came from gold country. Packing up my grand father's belongings opened my eyes, but the bug was there from a couple of mates father's that dredged when it was legal. I got bitten hard when an old bloke I still go out with to this day had a 2100 and I was helping him dig a hole that yielded an ounce plus nugget right in front of my eyes. The place that we were at was less than 1km from the house I grew up in. I've really only come back to it, I lost interest in my late teens. Once your in though it never goes away.

 

[Hunting the yellow]

found my first gold mine at the age of just 12 and was hooked in going down the old mines and exploring them then it kind of differed from that as I started finding gold in the quartz reefs/veins and still find more gold doing this than detecting and panning together but there is a big risk factor that I am well aware of and that I never get complacent one bit when going into the old mines

 

[Brumble-Gum]

My mum got me into it.
I remember running around Ruby Hill in the 80's near Barraba in NSW picking up garnets off the meat ant nests.

 

[bazza2210]

I had a trip to Alaska in 2013 and learned how to pan :lol:

 

[dwt]

I always dreamed of finding the "Martha Farkar" of nuggets, and standing up in front of the "the man" and tellin him where to go bash it!!!!
Sadly now I work for myself, but the dream of the nugget still lives on!!! 8.(
Can't really remember what got me into gold, but now that I am, I'm all over it like the burn after a week in Bangkok :lol:

 

[20x]

my interest began from watching gold rush alaska, while watching i worked on building a gold wash plant out of technic lego and then i stepped it up using balsa wood :lol: from bunnings so i could actually run water through it...interest has turned into addiction and thats turned into my life.

 

[backcreek]

I never had an interest in prospecting and had no idea where all the gold fields were. I knew where all the major fields were but I had no idea about the others until a few years ago when I read a book about the Clarke brother bushrangers called "The Bloodiest Bushrangers". They made the Kelly Gang look like pussies.
I then realized that the areas we were trail riding through were old goldfields and that my mates farm where I spent a lot of time is about 1km from a major gold field.
I then got a copy of Bungonia to Braidwood and the extent of the field became apparent.
I then asked one of his neighbors who knew me well if I could get on to his place to do some prospecting and the rest is history.
I now have exclusive access to a spot on the river and do most of my prospecting there when time permits.
I think I'm very fortunate.

 

[Gold689]

Watching Walnliz youtube video Inspired me and the wife

 

[Tathradj]

The very fist ride on my Bombardier bike was up to Vimmy Ridge on Dr George Mountain just out of Bega on my L plates. (1976)
It fascinated me on how the old miners dug like this.
My Father. He took me one day to a set of mines on Wolumla and showed me what was going on.
I was hooked. :lol:
Over the years I nurtured a deep respect for the time and toil put into this thing called gold and it wasn't until later I woke up to how much blood, sweat and tears went into winning or eking out a living that our forefathers put into it. 8)
Just to put food onto the table. :|
I was pretty well into it back in the late 1980's to early 1990's but the rabbid greenies drove us out all the time.
I stopped. It was just to dangerous being shot at, Car tires slashed. Too many Arguments.
Then,
February this year I was a bit curious to see the amount of sluices beside the road at Oallen Ford. :lol:
I took my Mum up to my nephews wedding about 3 Klick's from Oallen, (That is where the wood came from for the past meet)
It had me a bit buggered. LOL
When I got back home again within 15 minutes I found out things were very different from what I thought. Then the whole world opened up with this forum. (Oh hell I am in trouble now. )
Now, Apart from the heat you will not keep me from bloody well enjoying the hobbie.
The new friends that I have found, Just getting out there and enjoying my self.
It does take a little bit of getting used to as these days I live a very well closed life but thing's are changing.
Just go get some basic gear, Go do it.
Oh, Watch the bloody snakes.

 

[MJB]

Growing up in Brisbane I was a fair way away from any goldfields but when we went on a Family holiday to Beechworth one year and sovereign hill in Ballarat I always had a interest since then. Turning 18 and moving around the countryside for the next ten years did not help me to think about it much until I ended up in my current locale, 2.5 hrs from anywhere but being bored and realised I had not done anything about prospecting. That was 2 years ago and now I cannot get enough of it, still have bugger all to show for my efforts but am happy that I always bring back something in the pan and the memory bank

 

[WalnLiz]

Was back in 1963 on a camping trip in the Vic high country with the old man. He was into shooting pigs and foxes and us kids were into catching trout which back then were in plague proportions. Fishing upstream one morning I came across a guy using a dredge and was intrigued at what he was doing submerged for hours with his hookah vacuuming the bedrock into his surface sluice.

I watched him do a cleanup at the end of the arvo and was fascinated at all the yellow metal in that sluice. I asked him if it was worth the effort and he said the cleanup was close to 5 ounces and would have been better than a doctors wages at the time. The next camping trip the old man got me a small dredge, after a lot of grovelling, and I left the fishing rod at home. Seeing the gold laying on the bedrock and then shooting up the hose of the dredge was as addictive a sight as I'd ever come across.

From then on it was the old man shooting and me submersed in the river feeding my new addiction. From then on shooting and dredging went hand in hand, and every river researched with alluvial gold in NSW was systematically visited for many many years, until the ban on dredging was introduced. After the ban I revisited the best and richest of the streams with metal detectors and later High bankers and the rest is history. 50 years later and the obsession refuses to diminish. :|

Wal.