If you’re a diehard forty-niner (the gold rush kind) in search of gilded treasures, there’s an old mining town in Aussieland where large nuggets of precious metal can be found lying mere inches below the ground.
If you’re lucky, you might even come across a piece that’s so big it can give you a solid fist bump!
Most people would be happy to find a dime-sized slug of pure profit just lying in the dirt. Even a teeny 10-gram piece can fetch the occasional weekend gold digger $600 USD, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at!
But in the Land of Nope, a nugget that’s small enough to get lost inside your nose simply won’t do.
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Serious prospecting hobbyists know that Kalgoorlie is the place to be whenever they need to fatten up a skinny wallet.
Finding a chonky piece of gold that’s “bigger than a packet of smokes” isn’t all that unusual here.
In fact, Matt Cook, the owner of Finders Keepers Gold Prospecting (a local supplier of prospecting gear) seems to have customers who dig up bling all the time.
A couple of years ago a treasure hunter proudly showed him a golden egg that was estimated to be in the ballpark of $69,000 USD. He promptly uploaded a hand selfie of the motherload to his Facebook page, exclaiming:
“What a monster!! 1.4 Kilo piece found a few weeks ago near Kalgoorlie by a very lucky customer of mine whilst walking the saltbush flats.”
This beefy hunk of rock would be so easy to spot in a game of “which hand is it in!”
Kalgoorlie, which is about 350 miles from Perth, is home to a commercial gold-mining Super Pit that can be seen from outer space.
Yet, as ugly as the massive scar looks from above, it’s still a popular tourist destination.
That’s probably because much like a six-pack of beer, gold has a funny way of making things look way more attractive than they really are.
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The area was first mined in 1893 when three prospectors discovered 100 ounces of gold in one of the largest deposits on the planet. It sparked the Australian gold rush, which, unlike its American counterpart, never actually ended.
In fact, Kalgoorlie is home to the longest-running gold rush in history!
The most abundant region, known as the Golden Mile (which is basically the entirety of the Super Pit), has produced upwards of 60 million ounces of heavy metal since mining first began. In today’s prices, that amounts to $100 billion dollars worth of gold-gilded juju!
Amateurs win the gold lotto here at least a few times a year. As long as you don’t mind getting grilled in the scorching heat, you might even find a little token of appreciation to cover the cost of renting a metal detector.
“They’re the ones that keep yer marching forward when it’s hot, the flies are friendly & the back is screaming!!” – @David Glover
This should be enough to buy a private jet to fly you home, right?
Professor Spearing, director of the Western Australia School of Mines at Curtin University, told the BBC:
“Along with the mines around, a lot of people go around as prospectors on the weekend, as a hobby. Other people do it on a full-time basis. Most of the gold found is in the less than half an ounce category, but they do find them fairly frequently.”
Scientifically speaking, it sounds like the odds of striking it rich in Kalgoorlie are pretty good.
Who knows, you might even be the next lucky bushwalker to land a fistful of expensive fairy dust! And if not, at least you can show your friends your badass Aussie sunburn.
Make gold prospecting easier on yourself by learning what to look for in the video below!
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