Capturing a northern goldfields Rhino
Early on a warm, sunny March morning my prospecting partner and I had returned to a regular spot where we’d enjoyed a growing success rate. We’d been chipping away for around three hours using our Minelab SDC2300s with no luck and having covered several kilometres on foot for no reward, we decided to pack up and move a little further away from what had become familiar ground. While scouting new terrain we found a huge horseshoe by the side of the road and took this as a sign our luck was about to change. It never hurts to be optimistic in this game. Soon after, we came across a new spot that really didn’t look anything special (although everything’s kind of special when you’re hunting for new ground). We decided to give it a bash anyway and drove on through a creek and up onto a small cleared area near several quartz outcroppings. We had a quick drink and a bite to eat before setting off in different directions. I went and detected the creek line while my partner detected around the bottom of the quartz lines draining into the creek, which was awash with leaves and sticks.
And on the scales. At the current gold price, you’re looking at more than $50,000
We’d been at it for about 15 minutes when I picked up a very strong signal at the base of an old, dead tree in the creek. Now, if anybody who has detected the northern goldfields knows, a hundred years of mining will give you a hundred years of rubbish, so, my first thought was that I’d found another debris-covered rusty relic. Putting my doubts aside, out came the scoop and removing about two inches of gravelly creek sand and crushed quartz revealed something a bit special. Keeping my composure, I called my partner over to “come and check out this old rusty can” “You should come over and see it before I break it up as it’s really quite old,” I said. Needless to say, she was reluctant at first because, hey, we’ve all seen a crappy old tin can before but true to her kind nature, she humoured me and came over to take a look. I moved away from the spot and pointed to where she should take a gander. She smiled patronisingly at me (as always) and moved carefully over to the tree base. She knelt down, cleared away a little dirt and then looked up at me with this dumbfounded look on her face. She let out a few words of excitement and then suggested I should dig it out myself seeing as I’d found it. After a quick little scratch, out came a sizeable nugget covered in dirt. A joyful jig then followed for the next 10 minutes before we settled down and set about thoroughly detecting the immediate surrounds. In fact, we spent the next two hours gridding and regridding the area and came up empty-handed. That was it for the day; exhausted but chuffed we packed up, drove the 50km back into town and treated ourselves to a pub counter lunch and a little refreshment or two. The SDC2300 is a great little detector having proved itself time and again. I highly recommend it and it lives right next to my new (and battle-scarred) GPX6000. Oh yeah, we called the nugget ‘Rhino’ because of its size and shape. It tipped the scales at 359.99 grams or 12.695oz.
A Rhino in the hand