At the age of 6 in 1984 my father handed me my first detector a whites 6000 I spent weekends hunting the family farm on the outskirts of Ballarat for coins/tokens and found around 50 various “treasures” dating back to the 1800s goldrush.

The excitement and fever hit me early! I spent a lot of weekends of my teens following my father and another old timer panning the surrounding creeks and gullies.

In early adult life I pursued my passion and set off to all corners of the triangle and Victorian high country panning, sluicing, dry blowing and sniping for gold.

I love the thrill of the adventures and sometimes the best parts were the smell of a campfire on a cool night, gazing at the stars from an open swag thinking of what next finds await! The hunt continued and I started thinking of all the places I’d found gold if detecting would be successful.

I was very lucky by then to have taken on a lot of knowledge from an old timer about the geology of the local areas, and spent a lot of time reading maps and a book called the gold and mineral districts of Victoria matching research to maps and was quite successful in my finds. I then decided to take up the dark side and i brought several detectors.. along this journey I met a mate who had extensive experience in detecting and passed on some knowledge how to run these to their best one of these detectors was a fisher goldbug2 I went on and found thousands of small bits with it. Down the track I brought an sdc2300 that’s when the same mate introduced me to the Coiltek gold extreme 10×5 coil I found this to be the perfect combo for the gold I was hunting and didn’t take me long to find enough to pay off the outlay. I then upgraded to the 5000 and the 6000 was introduced so I got on the list early and like previous Minelab machines opened a window of gold I previously missed. And again the same mate told me of the GOLDHAWK range so I decided early to add them to my kit. I’ve found using both the 9”round and 10×5 GOLDHAWK picked up even more bits I had missed and were the perfect combo for me on the 6000 I have had many sessions where I’ve got 10-20+ pieces  a lot of these were on well known shallow areas on Goldmaps I’ve     literally added hundreds of bits to my jar since owning them.

Only a couple of weeks ago the weekly tally was just over 6grams (in pic) a couple of nights of that we spent camping and got 82 pieces for 2.7grams. It’s sure does add up!

At this point I’ve found over 200 ounces of gold and since owning the gpx6000 I’ve found gold that has paid it off a few times over.

My partner also enjoys using the 10×5 combo and is also doing well finding the tiniest of bits.

Each week is exciting for us in our adventures for gold and I think our best finds no matter how big or small are yet to come!

There’s just so many adventures to do and not enough time!!