While discoveries like this are rare, Australia is estimated to have the world's largest gold reserves and many of the world's biggest
In a few places gold is sufficiently concentrated in the rocks for it to be worth mining. Australia (especially Western Australia) is the one of the world's top producers of gold. About 60% of Australia's gold resources occur in Western Australia, with the remainder in all other States and the Northern Territory.
In Victoria, most underground gold is found in "quartz reefs": bands of hard white quartz. Formed some 400 million years ago, these gold-bearing reefs may be kilometres long, but are typically less than a metre wide, and slant steeply into the ground. The places where these reefs break the surface were hard to find.
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.
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.
If you discover gold or other minerals or gemstones on land not covered by a mining tenement, and the ground is Crown land (under the Mining Act 1978), then you are free to keep what you have found (as long as you hold a Miner's Right).
When it comes to metal detecting, you have a bigger opportunity of finding gold upstream, in riverbeds and beaches. However, if you want to try your luck on land where there are moderate to flat slopes, the desert is a destination where you can expect to witness various relics.
Most state courts, including those of Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin, have decided to stick to the tried and true “finders keepers” concept. If you found it (and it didn't involve trespassing), you get to keep it!
You can't buy, hold or sell gold unless it is a legitimate part of your trade or in the form of jewellery.
If you did happen to find a large gold deposit on your property and do not own the mineral rights, don't fear. You do still own the property at least from the ground up. The mineral rights owner cannot simply come and remove you and dig up your property.
You can sell your acquired gold in Australia if you need instant cash. You can exchange different forms of gold for cash in ways like: Selling your jewellery to buyers to earn extra money for unexpected bills. You can sell broken gold, silver, or diamond jewellery to jewellers.
Rivers and streambeds are the best places to look for gold. However, there are also a number of other places where gold can be found. Beaches are another commonplace to find gold. Beaches usually have a lot of sand and sediment, so it is important to look for pure gold in the crevices and cracks.
As the earth's crust is estimated to mass around 2.6 * 1022 kg, it means that there is around 400 billion kg of gold throughout the entire crust. Much of it will never really be accessible, of course, but there really is quite a bit out there.
Gold is found in Archean (rocks older than 2.5 billion years) greenstone belts in Australia, southern Africa, and Canada. Greenstone belts are volcanic-sedimentary sequences, which include ultramafic rocks, dolerite, basalt, chert, sandstone, shale, tuff, banded iron-formation and other rock types.
It is perfectly legal to sell and buy gold in Australia. You can sell a kilo of gold bars, a wedding ring or an old coin. The Australian government has set guidelines for the sale of precious metals. There is no restriction on the weight or value of precious metal.
Declarations. Goods valued at more than AUD1000 require an import declaration. Goods valued at, or below, AUD1000 require a self-assessed clearance (SAC) declaration.
Q: Will any metal detector find gold? Yes. Most metal detectors are capable of finding gold but some will do a much better job than others. Since gold has rather low conductivity, metal detectors that use higher frequencies will spot gold better than low-frequency detectors.
Gold and Platinum are Not Magnetic
The security system at airports is among other things looking for magnetic metals. You are more likely to set off the alarm wearing cheap costume jewelry, frequently made with magnetic metals, than fine gold and platinum jewelry.
There is no such thing as "finder's keepers" in Australia. "A lot of people don't realise that if you find anything worth more than $100 you have to hand that in to the police," Preston said. "If you keep or sell it, it's called theft by finding and it's a chargeable offence."
The depth of the deposit is crucial
And for the mineralisation to be as long as possible, the deposit must be deep - 3 km from the surface - to guarantee a certain degree of insulation and a long magma life." Chiaradia observed that less than 1% of the gold is captured in the ores in the deep copper-rich deposits.
You want to look for signs of gold like black sands, pyrite and small quartz, as these are all usually good indicators of gold being in the area. Garnets may also be present, often appearing in many shades of colors including red, orange and pink!
We discovered that eucalyptus trees in the Kalgoorlie region of Western Australia draw up gold particles from the earth via their root system and depositing it in their leaves and branches.