Weekend miners going for gold in Australia

By Sid Astbury Jan 12, 2012, 9:30 GMT

Sydney - Kim Ellis and Lincoln Parsons can stand it no longer.

Leaving daughter Kayla to look after their gold prospecting equipment shop near Sydney, they are packing up their truck, ready to set off across the continent to do some fossicking on their own account in the west of Australia.

'They call it gold fever for a reason,' Ellis said. 'The shop has actually been booming along quite well, but we want to get out there and be prospectors ourselves.'

Helping drive the new gold rush - and the sales of metal detectors and the other equipment that keep Ellis' and Parsons' business bounding along - is the soaring value of the yellow metal.

At about 1,600 US dollars an ounce, it takes only about 4 ounces to buy a top-of-the-range metal detector. A year ago, the outlay would have been nearer 6 ounces.

There has never been a better time to dig up a nugget. Bullion is now worth more than platinum and is an unofficial reserve currency. Central banks, once big sellers, are restocking their vaults. China, the world's biggest producer, has banned exports.

Ellis has a laugh when people come into her shop, Nuggets from Down Under in Mudgee, to ask about gold detectors.

'If it was that easy, I'd be out in the field all the time,' she said. 'I tell them they don't make gold detectors yet and what they mean is a metal detector.'

Still, there has been a huge improvement in the technology. Adelaide-based Minelab, a world leader, has doubled its sales in the past three years. Detectors are lighter than they were, meaning more women can use them, and more sensitive.

Mark Hyde, who runs tour operator Gold Prospecting Australia, said modern detector wizardry meant that it was possible to find gold in old workings that only a few years ago had registered as barren.

'It's like going into a new gold field,' Hyde said. 'The improvement has been tremendous.'

Sound too good to be true? It is.

Last year, 110 people went on Gold Prospecting Australia tours, a third with no previous fossicking experience, and 20 per cent were foreign tourists

'Every time they pull a piece of gold out of the ground, they get excited, but I tell them that it's a hobby that might - just might - pay for itself,' Hyde said.

Of the 110 people Hyde took to the workings last year, about 15 covered the cost of their tour with the gold they dug up.

In the original 1870s goldrush, all the miners had were picks, shovels and pans. They worked streams, swilling the sediment around in their wok-like pans and hoping tiny specks of gold would appear in the dull, metal dish.

Panning for gold is much as it was 130 years ago. Some, like 77-year-old Sydney engineer Martin Marks, stick with the old method.

Three years ago, Marks was ready to close his backyard forge and give up making the pans and sluices that amateurs use, but now, the soaring price of gold is bringing more business than ever.

'You can make a living out of it if you know what you're doing,' said Marks, three-time national gold-panning champion. 'If you've got old gear, you're not going to make any money.'

Using an electronic wand to find metal does not have the romance of panning for gold. Foreign tourists tend to like panning despite the back-breaking work and the scant rewards.