Australia is estimated to have the world's largest gold reserves, with 9,500 tonnes or 17 per cent of the total world estimated gold reserves of 57,000 tonnes.
A group of experts have concluded that the current increased production rate will lead to the depletion of some finite resources, including gold. Just how scarce are our gold reserves? Well, a group of scientists have set a date for the disappearance of the rare metal, and that is just 27 years away, in 2050.
The Earth has a limited amount of gold in its crust and experts are estimating that it may be unsustainable to mine gold by 2050. Compared to the nearly 4,000-7,000 year history of humans mining gold, that's barely a blink of an eye.
About 60% of Australia's gold resources occur in Western Australia, with the remainder in all other States and the Northern Territory. Virtually all resources occur in primary deposits, many of which have undergone some degree of weathering.
The WGC estimates that there are 54,000 tonnes of “below-ground gold reserves” waiting to be mined. These below-ground reserves account for less than 30 percent of what has already been mined. “World gold supplies are difficult to quantify.
In 2022, the United States was estimated to have some 3,000 metric tons of gold reserves in mines. Thus, the U.S. was one of the leading countries based on mine reserves of gold. Australia is estimated to have the largest gold mine reserves worldwide.
The United States holds the largest stockpile of gold reserves in the world by a considerable margin at over 8,100 tons. The U.S. government has almost as many reserves as the next three largest gold-holding countries combined (Germany, Italy, and France).
Make sure you have permission to pan for gold, as no one would be happy to find you trespassing on their land. You'll need to pick up a Miner's Right Permit to do any prospecting in Australia. You can easily apply for one online or at some tourist centres. Then you need to find a good spot to settle down.
The second gold rush
Mining companies from across the world are coming to Victoria, believing with modern methods they can find and dig up more of Victoria's unusually pure gold.
Considered by most authorities to be the biggest gold nugget ever found, the Welcome Stranger was found at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, in 1869 by John Deason and Richard Oates. It weighed gross, over 2,520 troy ounces (78 kg; 173 lb) and returned over 2,284 troy ounces (71.0 kg; 156.6 lb) net.
1st place: Muruntau mine, Uzbekistan
These unusual expanse is due to the nature of the gold deposits, located primarily in concentrated accumulations of quartz rock, so-called veins. The output of the Muruntau mine was over 51 tons in 2010, increased to more than 62 tons by 2020 and 82 tonnes in 2021.
Some of the veins produce up to one quarter of an ounce of gold per ton of rock. What makes Dahlonega gold so different from other gold found around the world is the purity. Dahlonega has the purest gold in the world, which is 98.7 percent pure.
Satellite imaging has shown that the top 10 centimetres of regolith (moon soil) at the south pole of the moon appear to hold about 100 times more gold than the richest mines on earth. Only a few years ago, most geologists would have laughed at the idea of mining anything from our moon.
About 244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date (187,000 metric tons historically produced plus current underground reserves of 57,000 metric tons).
If you were hoping make your fortune mining the sea, consider this: Gold in the ocean is so dilute that its concentration is very small. One study found there is only about one gram of gold for every 100 million metric tons of ocean water in the Atlantic and north Pacific.
Other gold mines use underground mining, where the ore is extracted through tunnels or shafts. South Africa has the world's deepest hard rock gold mine up to 3,900 metres (12,800 ft) underground. At such depths, the heat is unbearable for humans, and air conditioning is required for the safety of the workers.
In Australia, gold prospectors have so many opportunities to become very rich. The time spent moving from one location to another, searching for gold with metal detectors, is worth it.
Victoria's gold-bearing rocks are sandstones, siltstones and mudstones, deposited in deep marine conditions some 400 million years ago. Today they form a bedrock spine that runs east to west through Victoria, with the Great Divide running along the crest of Victoria's Western and Eastern Uplands.
Discovery of gold in Australia
There had been multiple gold finds in New South Wales (Bathurst and Monaro), Tasmania and what would become Victoria prior to the 'official' discovery of the precious metal by Edward Hargraves near Orange in 1851.
The best estimates currently available suggest that around 208,874 tonnes of gold has been mined throughout history, of which around two-thirds has been mined since 1950. And since gold is virtually indestructible, this means that almost all of this metal is still around in one form or another.
It is very dense. Another rather simple way to think of this is that if the density of water is 1 g/cc then the density of gold is 19.3 times greater than water. Water weighs about 8.3 pounds per gallon. Therefore gold weighs 19.3 times as much or (19.3 x 8.3 lb) about 160 pounds per gallon.
Industry would come to a standstill in general, and many specialty fields would go out of business, from aerospace engineering to nanotechnology to certain types of environmental control and protection.