With gold sitting around $6300 dollars an ounce and values up forty-five percent this year, Australians are discovering their inner prospector.
Victoria and Western Australia might steal the limelight, but South Australia’s goldfields at Echunga, Castambul and the Gumeracha Goldfields once glimmered with promise.
Now, with new technology and a fresh sense of adventure, fossickers are returning to the hills. Some are chasing fortune. Most are chasing fun.
With gold prices shimmering at record highs Australia’s fascination with the precious metal has found new life and prospectors are once again heading bush in search of the glittering promise buried beneath their boots.
Adelaide writer and adventurer Max Anderson knows that thrill better than most. He’s the author of Digger, a cult classic among modern fossickers, written after six months living in the Western Australian goldfields.
“I had a tent, a truck and a dog named La La. And not a lot else,” he says.
“It was the most insane, most satisfying chapter of my life.”
Two decades on, the fever hasn’t left him.
“There’s great technology out there now,” he says.
“You can invest four or five grand in a metal detector, find an ounce of gold, and cover your cost. You get outside, have an adventure in the great Australian bush. Nothing not to love, right?”
with La La the dog
While most people think of Victoria or Kalgoorlie when they picture gold, Max says South Australia has had its own glittering moments.
“We didn’t have huge goldfields, but we had Echunga, Castambul, and Mount Crawford Forest including the Gumeracha Goldfields. They were small, tightly demarcated fields.”
“Jupiter Creek and Mount Crawford are still the biggest and busiest for the modern day prospector.”
South Australia’s gold story might not have been a blockbuster, but it definitely had its moments.
In the 1850s, word spread that gold had been found at Chapman’s Gully near Echunga in the Adelaide Hills, just sixteen kilometres from Adelaide. For a brief moment, it looked like South Australia might have its own Bendigo.
When word of bigger fortunes spread across the border, most miners packed up and headed east. A few diehards stayed behind, working the creeks from Chapman’s Gully down to Jupiter Creek, which went on to become one of South Australia’s biggest producers.
It’s believed around 25,000 to 50,000 ounces of gold came out of those hills before the rush finally faded out at the turn of the century. These days, only a few stone remnants and old diggings remain, now part of a heritage-listed fossicking site where hopefuls can still give it a go.
Up north in the hills, the Gumeracha goldfields near Birdwood had their own story to tell. The area buzzed with excitement through the 1860s and 1870s when gold was found in gullies like Hynes Reef and Lucky Hit. Most of it was the kind you could pan straight from the creek bed, and it kept locals busy right up until the 1930s when the gold finally ran dry.
Those old rushes in the hills were short-lived, but their ghosts remain in relics, shafts and murmured tales of sudden fortune and silent ruin.
The hills are quieter now, but that spark of adventure still hangs in the air.
Gold prospecting today is only permitted in designated fossicking areas across South Australia, including Jupiter Creek near Echunga and parts of Mount Crawford Forest near the old Gumeracha Goldfields.
A permit is required for Mount Crawford, and fossickers must protect waterways, avoid disturbing plants and wildlife, and use only simple tools like pans and metal detectors.
Max has seen both sides of gold fever.
“The biggest nugget I found was a 1.3-ounce nugget,” he says.
“I actually found two of them. Back in 2002, gold was only $700 an ounce now $6300″
“I’ve also heard stories of people hanging onto small pieces of gold in a jar for years and suddenly realising they are sitting on thousands of dollars worth!”
But it’s not the money that hooks people, he says.
“It’s the thrill of looking for treasure. You’ve either got that or you haven’t. You can spend hours in the heat, the flies, the sweat and the dirt. You might find nothing all day. But when you do dig up gold, it’s pure exhilaration. It’s one of the greatest experiences to pull up a piece of gold that you’re the first human being to see.”
He laughs about the myths and tall tales that swirl through the goldfields.
“Everybody knows somebody that came good. One bloke I met that the locals called Thick in the Head kicked over a log near Leonora and found a 22 ounce nugget (in today’s market that’s close to $139,000). Stories like that keep everyone going.”
“Ever since we came down from the trees, we’ve been fascinated by gold because it shines like the sun. It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. It’s timeless.”
Whether it’s a metal detector in Mount Crawford or a pan at Jupiter Creek, the fever is taking hold again.
To find out more about Max’s book Digger, click here.
South Australian Gold Prospecting Facebook Group, click here.
To find out more about fossicking in South Australia and for maps, click here.
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