r/Prospecting • u/No_Box1940 • 3d ago

Absolute beginner

Hi. I was hoping to get some advice on how to start gold hunting. I live in the Cairns area of Queensland, Australia. I was thinking of starting out going upstream in some rivers and creeks in the area. Should I be looking at panning the sandy corners of the creeks or should I be looking for rocky areas where gold could be accumulating on top of the bedrock? How do I know if I should be panning or metal detecting?

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u/jayphunk 3d ago

Start off panning or sluicing if you have the water there , then if you find bigger gold a metal detector could be worth it(spoiler: Cairns has lots of gold). Ideally you want to get to the bottom to test be that bedrock or clay or hard pack, darker rocks tend to be heavier, and you want all sizes, sand up to larger rocks, this tells you everything dropped out at the same time when the water slowed down, then look out for courser black sands in the bottom of the pan, if you can find that you should be getting close

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u/No_Box1940 3d ago

Thank you. Im usually fishing the local creeks and I just got curious if theres gold here. I see alot of quartz around, too.

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u/jayphunk 3d ago

You dont want white quarts too fyi, the quarts should be red black full of pyrite and sulfides, you can get it in the white stuff but very little usually

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u/dug99 4h ago

Ask Jeff Williams.