Mapped: Areas where Australians are striking gold
Two friends from Western Australia have struck gold, pocketing more than $160,000 after discovering large nuggets during a prospecting mission.
Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association of Western Australia President James Allison told the Kalgoorlie Miner the two men uncovered the treasure at Sandstone, a small town some 400km northwest of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
Mr Allison said the two men, who had been prospecting for decades, came across a one-ounce nugget worth more than $5000.
Later that day, the pair hit the jackpot again when their detector picked up a second sound.
The men dug up and unearthed another piece weighing 895 grams, worth a whopping $161,000, according to the Perth Mint spot price as of June.
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Victoria is also on the cusp of a whole new gold rush, with bush blocks where owners have found the odd nugget becoming hot property.
Towns across the state's former gold fields, and especially in the golden triangle bounded by Bendigo, Ballarat and Wedderburn, have wannabe prospectors hunting for cheap land to hunt for the valuable mineral.
With the price of gold surging over the past decade the leading lobby group believes more and more people will be looking to stake a claim to an alluvial address.
Prospectors and Mining Association of Victoria President Jason Cornish said more people had begun looking to buy a cheap bush block amid fears the state government would turn Crown land — where prospecting is currently legal — into national parks, where it is not.
Stockdale & Leggo Bendigo Sales Manager Grant Hosking said he was seeing good numbers of retirees relocating from Melbourne to take up a prospecting hobby in their golden years.
Buyers have been homing in on blocks anywhere from 4ha to 40ha.
'In Wedderburn, property has never sold that quick, but we are selling them very, very quickly at the moment — and getting good prices for them,' Mr Hosking said.
'And most of it is weekenders and hobby prospectors.'
The Australian Government Geoscience Australia website shows a map of where gold is likely to be found and which states have greater sources of gold.
It says gold is mostly found in rocks, and WA accounted for 60 per cent of Australia's gold discoveries.
Primary deposits, where miners target, were in Kalgoorlie in the Super Pit, Granny Smith, St Ives, Norseman and Mount Magnet all in WA, Gympie and Ravenswood Qld, Callie NT, Stawell Vic, Cadia NSW, Henty Tas and Challenger in SA.
Gold is also found in Olympic Dam, SA – the area is mined with copper and uranium.
'Mostly, gold is spread throughout the rocks and soil around us but in such low amounts that it's not worthwhile trying to get it out,' the website said.
'However, there are some places where there is enough gold to make it economic to mine.'
— Additional reporting by Nathan Mawby
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