Amateur prospectors seek to cash in on record high gold prices

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There's said to be a modern-day gold rush happening in Australia as people look to cash in on record high gold prices fuelled by global market unrest.

Transcript

00:00Oh, there's a wide range of people. There's semi-retired people and weekend fossickers

00:09that want to get in on the action and they don't really know how to go about it. So yeah,

00:16we run a training service out here that we do a three-day camp or we do one-day camps,

00:23whatever they want to do each month. But yeah, they come out, we teach them how to drive

00:27their machines, the detectors, and how to read the ground and how to find it and yeah.

00:33Okay, so Donnie, you've been doing this for a few years now, over 15 years or so. What

00:39does it take to become a successful prospector? A lot of hard work. A lot of, yeah, you'll

00:49have days where you'll cry and days where you'll be happy.

00:55All right. Okay. Now we know that Australia had its gold rush between 1851 and I think it was 1893

01:03or something like that. Is there still more gold to find in Australia or has it all been found?

01:10Oh no, there's plenty of gold left in Australia. The biggest thing that we've got now is we can see

01:17the gold with the detectors that we've got and they're very modern age detectors and very powerful

01:23machines. Yeah. And yeah, the old timers didn't have the detectors, so they missed a lot of gold.

01:29All right. Well, I'm presuming that you can't just kind of just rock up anywhere and just start

01:35prospecting or digging, can you? You need to get permission to prospect on certain land, is that right?

01:41Yeah. Private land, yeah. There is a fossicking license in Queensland. In most states there's

01:48some sort of fossicking license. And yeah, you just come on to out at Claremont, we're lucky to have

01:54about 12 and a half thousand hectares of general permission area where you can come out and try your

02:01luck. And yeah, it's there's plenty of ground. All right. Well, what happens, you know, if someone was

02:09to find a nugget or gold, what's the process from finding it, you know, being over the moon about it

02:18and then turning it into cash? Well, when a prospector comes out and finds gold here, General

02:25Fossica can find a certain amount of gold a year, which is actually tax free. So they don't have to

02:32pay tax on it. All they do is clean it up and they can advertise it on Facebook or take it into one of

02:38the gold buyers in the cities and they'll pay them cash. What is the biggest or heaviest nugget or piece

02:47of gold that you found? 292 grams. Wow. So that would be around $45,000, close to $50,000.

02:58Okay. So, okay. Given that the price of gold has skyrocketed now, how much would you get for a nugget

03:07today? Okay. So I've got a couple of nuggets here. Okay. Can you see them?

03:12Well, just hang on. Yeah. Okay. Oh, sorry. A bit dark, but yeah. We'll take your word for

03:23it that it's a nugget. That's one and okay. That's two. So that's an ounce. That's $5,000 worth of gold

03:33I'm holding in my finger there. $5,000. That's pretty good. But how long did it take to find that?

03:40Uh, to actually find it? Probably about half an hour, but a lot of searching, a lot of searching.

03:48All right. So what happens? You, you, you come up with a detector and you're, you're trying to,

03:54what, what are you, you're trying to listen for a particular sound?

03:57So the detectors are, they're metal detectors. They, they punch a magnetic field into the ground

04:03that hits the metal and bounces back to the machine and you listen for the tones. And yeah,

04:08you just, if you're lucky enough to swing over the top of one, you should be able to do it.

04:13But I'm presuming then that the detector really is just sort of detects things that are on the

04:19surface or how deep can it, can it detect gold? No, there's a, there's one of the detectors is a

04:24GPX 7,000 and it will detect, you know, depending on the size of the nugget,

04:30it'll go around a meter, a meter plus. Right. Well, Donnie, I'm in the market for, um,

04:37a new gold necklace. So if you find more gold, could I commission you to maybe make me a, a necklace,

04:44a gold necklace? How about I give you a free training session and come out here and get

04:48done? Deal. All right. You're on. Donnie Pascoe, it's great having you on the show. Thanks so much for

04:56chatting with us today. Thank you. Thank you very much. See you guys.

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