Hundreds join new gold rush

Press, 23 October 1980, Page 1

Hundreds join new gold rush

Sydney The old goldfields in Victoria and West Australia have come alive again with prospectors lured on by high gold prices and finds of huge nuggets. Fossickers in their hundreds have flocked to Wedderburn, 225 km northwest of Melbourne, and other areas in the "Golden Triangle” bounded by Wedderburn, Bendigo, and Dunolly. The gullies and hills round the area have at times been thick with prospectors armed with metal detectors, picks, shovels, pans, and old maps.

In July, three. schoolboys, out on a weekly

school gold hunt, found an Ssoz (2.5 kg nugget of gold later named the “Beggary Lump.” Its gold value was put at $50,000 but as a collector’s item it could fetch $lOO,OOO. If that was not enough

By

to lure thousands of amateur hopefuls, earlier this month an elderly couple found one df the largest lumps of gold ever found in Australia:, the “Hand of Faith.” It was only 15cm below the ground in the same area as the “Beggary Lump” and weighed 952 ounces (27kg), enough to

make 12,000 18-carat gold wedding rings. On present gold prices it has a melt-down value of about $550,000 but as a collector’s piece is valued about $1 million. It has been up for sale and

TOM BRIDGMAN,

NZPA staff correspondent

seems likely to be sold to a United States buyer, possibly a Las Vegas casino. Mr Cyril Kovac, the agent for the still anonymous owners, said that four different offers from overseas of $1 million had been made for the nugget, two of them from casinos.

The "Hand of Faith” is not Australia’s biggest single nugget: — that claim goes to the "Welcome Stranger,” a 70.92 kg find in Victoria in 1869. But it is still the third largest found this century.

The gold rush on the old Victorian fields started about 10 months ago, according to the Wedderburn police. A number of good nugget finds and the soaring world price of gold drew people to the area with expensive detectors. The only motel in Wedderburn is perpetually booked and

between 300 and 400 people are camped in the town’s only caravan park. Earlier this year, before the big finds, residents of Wedderburn said that $500,000 in nuggets had been found in the previous six months. The “Golden Triangle” is at the centre of the main gold finds in Victor’ ia round Ballarat and Bendigo in 1851 which saw hundreds of thousands of prospectors from all over the world heading for Australia in search of instant wealth.

Today-, it, is the metal .detectors which are probably the biggest; gold minej They sell for about $6OO each, while hire shops in Melbourne will let them out for $l5 a day and a $lOO deposit. Wedderbum businesses have also been booming with the influx of prospectors and the hotels are doing a’ roaring trade. ~ An, indication of - the gold, feyer ’that has-hit Victoria is that* in the last . year 16,000 miners’ rights , have been issued, allowing prospecting on Crown ’land; bringing the- Victorrian total to'2s,flOO.*’- ’- "' Australian and overseas ’.corporations have r /.also? ; joined .-“the'' gold*", tush, ■’scrambliugzfor exploration permits. Minerals and ’ Energy Department maps ’show that almost half the ■ state is under exploration licence or licence application, with ? companies also using new extraction * methods to- go over old tailings.- . * - . >, ■» It. is the same story, in ■West - Australia, with re- ; ports.of good, nugget finds. ■ and}.big companies, rebpen;ing ,and £investing in ■.gold mines' -and ‘ exploration.

In Kalgoorlie, which stands on the "Golden Mile,” where gold was discovered in 1893 bringing 200,000 prospectors to the then waterless desert, more , than $3O million is being spent to bring "mothballed” mines back into production. Exploration companies have also been searching for new finds and this week the Western Mining Corporation, originally formed in 1933 to find and develop gold areas, announced high-grade discoveries in . Victoria and West Australia. . But, as in. Victoria, it is the spectacular, and unusual nugget; finds which have captured, popular interest.. . ... , . The most interesting discoveries have been round the outback township,. pf Leonora, 200 km ' north, of Kalgoorlie. Last’ month ; two Aboriginal prospectors dug into a rabbit warren and unearthed 5.5 kg in gold nuggets, valued about $lOO,OOO, in three days, unleashing a gold rush which saw 2000 people head into the area. “Snowy.” Barnes, aged 69, and Peter. Thompson, aged 21,. were : digging out nuggets the size of lemons and oranges , and believed they hbd come, across af - valuable gold reef.

“Put a detector down that hole and it will go mad,” said Mr Barnes. The gold was coming out of a chalky rock pit only 3m deep at the rate of about an ounce. (28g) a minute;' ’• ‘t. The discovery of a gold reef is considered a bigger bonanza? for prospectors than alluvial deposits be* cause it can lead to a lodestone immensely richer than alluvial or reef deposits. The gold nuggets from the reef would have been formed back in geological history as the gold, in molten form, split from the thin reef and settled in pockets of soft rock. . The "Rabbit Warren” prospect, as it came to be known, was bought out by a local entrepreneur businessman and is now val* ued at millions of dollars, although commercial ex* traction is yet to begin. This week another couple found gold, this , time just south of the town of Agnew, to the north of Leonora, Peter and Molly. Muir, using a metal detector, said they found 'more than 180 punces (skg) of gold nuggets, the largest weighing 118 ounces (3,4 kg They pegged 18 goldmining leases in the area and said they would ' seek investment for commercial mining. ....