I had a month up my sleeve to learn about gold prospecting and explore the Australian bush.
Prospecting is no easy job. Long days, lots of walking and the psychology of persistence.
I arrived in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia on The Prospector, a high speed, state-of-the-art train, that can complete the 653 km journey in less than 7 hours.
Kalgoorlie really is a town in the middle of nowhere. A mining town, you get a sense that the place has a history of gold rush.
The name Kalgoorlie is derived from the Wangai word Karlkurla or Kulgooluh, meaning “place of the silky pears”. The town was developed in 1893 on Western Australia’s “Golden Mile”.
This was our base town – where we stocked up on supplies and washed off the dirt – after spending time in the bush.
I was lucky to be tagging along with my mum and her partner Tony. They had all of the major bases covered for travelling and living in the bush.
The roads in these parts of Australia are big, wide and dusty. And they go forever. Eventually, we reached our track to take us bush.
After about half an hour following the track into gold territory we came to a halt. A quick survey of the landscape and it was decided this would be an area worth searching.
Finding a suitable landscape to prospect amongst takes some knowledge of geology, and an understanding of the landscape you are looking at.
A great place to start learning is The Geological Survey of Western.
We navigated about the bush using a Hema, with graphics showing the specific mineral makeup of the landscape. I quickly learnt to look for quartz outcrops.
Gold prospecting is like fishing. You won’t catch anything unless your line is in the water.
Similarly, you won’t find gold if you aren’t swinging. It does take some time to get used to the swinging action, and build up resistance against the repetitive side to side movement of using a detector.
A metal detector (like those you see old men swinging on beaches) can be quite technical these days. But the basic specifications are a coil, a visual display (for settings), audio output, headphones and battery.
A pickaxe is used for digging the gold and a chain is dragged for marking out the ground (griding) after you’ve found a nugget.
The thing about gold prospecting is its both physical and psychological. Physical because you are active for most part of the day. I thought about my posture quite a lot.
Psychological because I needed to stay focused on the job, actively listening for the audio tone signal activated when metal is found. Often this could be rubbish such as bullets, tin, nails, staples or wire.
After a few days of no gold, your patience can really wear thin. I found myself exhausted by the end of the day. Always fresh and ready the next morning for a new day, with renewed hope.
I soon got used to the audio tone in my ear when metal was detected in or on the ground. Down to the side goes the detector, out comes the pick and a window of dirt is cleared on the surface.
You hope the signal continues to appear inside this window. Picking up the detector, you will slowly swing it over the cleared area. Should the signal have disappeared, you move to the pile of dirt you’ve now made. If it has not disappeared, then you start digging deeper.
The idea is to keep piling up dirt from the hole and checking for a signal – the signal should strengthen – with your detector. Eventually the signal will no longer be in the hole, but moved to the pile.
At this time, you put down your detector and start picking up handfuls of dirt. Each handful needs to be eliminated by holding it close to or over the detector. Always checking for a signal. Eventually you will get that sound, and you better hope it isn’t a piece of rubbish.
Finding gold in this environment is a strange thing. I struggled to comprehend how you can pick this treasure up of the ground.
Gold can be tricky to identify to the untrained eye. But after a closer look, it stands out, no matter what size. It looks, golden.
After a good week prospecting I found an 11.3 gram piece of gold. It was on the surface, and required no digging.
The weight of this piece of gold was evident in the hand. I started my grid and no more than five metres from the first piece I found another similar sized nugget.
I was on to what they call ‘a run’.
Suggested Activities
Alluvial Gold
Research and write a story about the history of gold prospecting in New Zealand
Write a song/rap using gold as your main theme
Create a story about a character searching for golden treasure
Construct a news report about the first person to discover gold