Who can remember

G/day All
Just a bit of fun, who can remember When, Where, and how big was your first nugget.
Mine was Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo in the middle of a dirt track and was 1 gram shaped like a figure 8. Using a Moded SD2000 with a 8" mono. ( you never forget your first. )

Cheers Mono.

G`Day Mono.Yep mine was a .8gm found at Paynesville West Aust.I was running a ml 3000 with 11 inch round minelab mono coil.Will never forget the buzz I got when she seen the first light.You are so right about never forgetting this moment.I feel I was pretty lucky as this was my first time out with the 3000.

cheers

Phil

Hi All ,
Still remember it , just out of Nullagine on our first trip back in 1996 . It was .7 gm on some old scrapes & I was using
the old Minelab XT 17000 with 11" dd coil . I was so excited to find my first ever bit of Gold .
It has been a great hobbie & met some great people along the way . I,ve still got it .


Cheers Charlie.

yep 0.8g piece just out of southern cross, shouldn't have forgotten it yet , was only a few years ago.
but I'm sure i'll remember it forever. I have 20 odd nugg's in the 1 container, I can pin point where each 1 come from
cheers
jase

Sure can. My memory is quite poor these times by seeing as we just arrived home it's fresh enough to remember. I dug a nice 1.44g nugget on a pending lease 10km North of Kookynie at the 2014 muster. I'm flying off to Brisbane on Tuesday to drive home and I've packed the detector in my luggage.

yep mine out near yundermindera a nice 7.9g ironstone specie containing about 4g of gold, best feeling ever and its a lot like when you first got laid, something you will never forget.

You will have to remind me where my first one was Mono lol
I still have it though and it took 2 weeks to get and I was shocked when I realised what I had dug after two weeks of other crap.
This pic was taken the next morning, you can see the covered in dig hole just in line with the shadow on the stump to the right of the stump.
It was a fair hole for such a small nugget, very poor at pinpointing at that stage, took me ages to get it into my hands lol

Darren

Not sure mate, I reckon it was around Tampa.

The cars are parked just behind the tree's if that helps lol
It was our second camp site from memory.

Darren

Great to see you back Mono/Nan, hope you survived another season with Jon.
Remember my first find clearly, was very new to the game in the very early 80's and had recently purchased a Garrett Deepseeker. Me and my trusty HX Holden ute were parked up at Nannine, living under a tarp strung between two trees and hadn't found a speck. Monday's were into town report into the local constable, sit in the "Top Pub" in Meekatharra and write post cards home to my daughters (This generation wouldn't understand there were no mobile phones or internet back then) met a very friendly couple, Bill & Nancy who enquired whether I must have found a fortune because had been writing for so long. Mentioned I didn't even know what natural gold looked like. :'(
Was playing pool with a couple of young fellas who invited me to join them in the search for gold. Returned to the bar and Bill invited me to join them at the servo for a meal and that they had something to show me.
Tossed a coin in my head, go with Bill & Nancy or stay in the pub and get legless.
Opted to join B & N, by far the smartest move, although it was the onset of "gold fever."
At the servo over a meal Bill gave me a 1.3g nugget to keep so I knew what natural gold was like, Nancy passed me an object under the table that I was not to show any excitement about. (Walls have ears)
This excitement turned out to be a 10 ounce pure nugget.
Bill & Nancy invited me to join them out at their new found area - Chesterfield.
Out of the servo into my ute down the road to Nannine (spinning the wheels) , packed up my tent and back to Meeka and out the Gascoyne road, in darkness the mud map Bill gave wasn't too clear, found the Wadda Wadda tank but waited until picaninny dawn to link up with them again.
Bill & Nancy introduced me to chaining in a circle (use it till this day) we commenced chaining and by lunch time nothing had been found.
B & N said they were going back to their van for lunch and to give a big "cooee" if anything was found. My dumb ass reply was, "How do I know if I find gold?"
Their reply was, "We don't have an answer but you will know."
Well a long story short, out of the salt & pepper came a very positive signal which turned out to be a ironstone specie with 1 1/4oz's of gold. A very loud cooee brought B&N running and they confirmed I had struck a beauty. They returned to their van and on the very next circle up popped (actually they were both sunbakers) a pure white quartz specie with 1/4oz AU.
The down side of my very first finds were, they were sold to the Perth mint, a decision regretted to this day, the sale of my first gold.
However to this day the 1.3g given to me all those years ago by Bill & Nancy is always in my "brag jar" at the start of every new day while out there detecting.

6 weeks Into detecting .gp3000  got my 1st  At the Nickol karratha .4gm .

two in one for me, out of Yalgoo and got a .5gm, toothbrushed it to death, then dropped it, had to pack up camp and move to re-detect the slippery little bugger.

geez cant remember me first piece or me first bodily union with the opposite sex,
time has eluded me, but I remember selling the first 4 ozs of gold when I had the 2200 coz was short of a dollar and doin it tough--so I reckon that first piece went to nickol bay jewellers..

as a mate said --if they r fat and but ugly then get rid of them--wasn't quiet sure what he was referring to but he was a prospector and good at it.

regards
oneday

First day with my brand new detector, an XT17000 in the main camp ground at Ophir NSW. I bought it off John Dyer so absolutely no instructions.

I was practicing on beer bottle caps and ring pulls about 8 feet from the garbage bin and dug one that sounded a bit different...a 2 1/2 oz slug!

I thought "well this is easy" but it was 2 years before I found my next bit which was about a gr.

November 2012
on a training day after purchasing the 5000
Maryborough Vic.
.3g :)
was a great day , I stuck around & finished with 2 for 1.95g

I'm hearing ya Jase, that's me too, I can almost name all my nuggets!

After turning the local beach into a dug-up minefield of bottle caps and sinkers, my son, the dog and I got under the wing of Cloggsie (Goldstrijk) and Crazy Pete for a trip to Cue to raid all of his local mate's patches.

Took 2 days, 5 different spots before made camp, shot a few cans, had a big meal, sang a couple of songs and got serious in the heat.
1/2 Carton of Calton Dry, 1 Bottle of Jacks and 1/2 bottle of Bundy later while under tuition by the master of the 5K half cut Crazy Pete, we nearly missed that faint threshold twinge on an old flattened prickle infested dryblower heap before we scratched up .3g piece.

By the way, Crazy Pete got 30 odd bits, but never rubbed that in, true gentlemen.

Gidday All
Was in Vic on holidays visiting my daughter & brother,thats where i grew up,anyway my brother was talking about gold and showed the sluice he bought and was thinking about buying a detector.So i looked into this and found myself at the miners den in vic and purchased a 3500 much to the discust of the Mrs.
I spent a day training at Coiltek as i didnt know jack about how this thing worked,being brought up in Vic i remember my dad taking us to Blackwood mineral springs for picnics and telling me chinese found lots of gold in the creek.
Victoria was was haveing a huge drought so i headed off to the creek which was dried up,after picking up alot of junk moveing further up the creek got a nice signal and dug up a 1oz specie.
Got so excited went straight home to show the Mrs,she asked why did you come straight back , so you better go back and get the rest.
Ended up with 5oz out that creek.

Yep................19 grammer  up near Broad Arrow. Had been using a Ground Hog with no success at all. Could not get it work without a heap of noise. Upgraded to 2200 and got it working well enough to find shoe tacks and .22 bullets. Then one day I was working in the usual collection of rubbish on a line of old shafts and in a small crab hole in thick bush I got a nice signal that turned out to be a nice thin 19 grammer that had come out of the nearby schisty shafts. I was hooked until death do us part.

Done a lot miles behind the 2200 since then. The first one has a lot of mates.

The problem with rubbing nuggets with your fingers is nano size particals come off and are absorded through your skin and enter your blood stream circulating forever. Every now and then they group up and cause a fever that can only be eased by rubbing more nuggets............

The 19 grammer will probably end up on chain around my Grand daughters neck.

Driller

I first got my miners right in 1981. A mate and I went out to Kal, then looked on the map for the furtherest east we could go (should be more gold the further out you go right?) we saw Pingin - and wentout in the old auto falcon station wagon we had in early january. No gold but it was an experience - amazing we survived really!

In 1983 had met some prospectors up at the Nullagine cravan park while I was on a work trip up there and got chased out by a cyclone - I lent them an electric drill and we got talking. I had a deepseeker and didn't have a clue how to use it. They showed me about 20 oz of gold and to my surprise invited me to come out prospecting with them some time. I was very into fishing (still am) and had spent all my time on the coast - but the inland Pilbara is pretty special and after seeing the gold I was hooked even more.

The next year I took my partner up there, with a couple of A2B's. We went out and spent a week by ourselves just having a crack. I finally found a little specie on an old Pebble mound mouse nest - I was sure it was about 1/2 oz. I was absolutely stoked!. I still have that bit. My wife Kate found a nugget the next day! She was shouting and carrying on so much I thought she had been bitten by a snake!

We went back to town and finally tracked down the 2 prospectors via Charlie Crow - all the prospectors were having a Hungie out near Cookes Creek. We went out at night and found them and proceeded to have a donkey Hungie (Mmmm) at met all the crew out there at the time. We showed them our gold and it turned ut my 'half ouncer' was a gram at best!

Anyway, they invited us out to a spot they were looking at.  This couple are now our very closest friends. But we had just met them at that stage. My mate got a a good signal and said I think this is a bit of gold - come have a listen. I had an A2B and he showed me that on TR mode the signal was the same as on Normal. We all had a go, his wife, my wife and me. We then dug up the signal and it was a 1 oz specie. Our friends said we should share our gold from then on. Bear in mind that they were professional - we were total novices. We all found bits over the next couple of days. A few days later I wandered off and got a big signal from between some spinny. I switched to TR and it was the same. I then dug and had the signal out. I picked up a rock and immediately felt the weight. I just dropped everyrhing and ran back (yep i was young) showed my wife then went to find the others. My mate was on the other side of a creek. I yelled out I have just found a nugget! He said now big? I replied with 'It is the biggest f… nugget I have ever f… seen! He came crashing through the scrub, down into the creek, then up the other side, and I put it in his hand. It was a specie, like a 'giant sandwich' a layer of quartz on each side and filled with gold in the middle. He said its only about 3 ounces! As it turned out it weighed 124g toal with 119g of gold in it. Now that was a day I will never forget!

Stingray

Me and My little brother set up camp north Kookyie on some pending ground in jan2013. We had just tested our 5000 , coupled with a NF17x11 on a sinker and I was good to go, I got 10meters from the car and got my first signal and realised I left My pick at the car. The little bro ran it over and he began to dig for me, the target was at about 8". We started testing soil and sure enough we unearth a little 1.2grammer that looked kinda like a dinosaur. Man the thrill, the research, we felt like we'd made a million and celebrated accordingly. had a beer and set off to find the rest of the hoard. we ended up with 4 bits for about 4grams.

Cheers, Jb

Hi Mono

Yep, was in 2000, just bought a SD2200 took a quick trip to Kal with the kids in school holidays. Ended up near Grants Patch, pulled over and did a detect. Found a nice 7 grammer, and it was fantastic especially with the kids. Kept going back to that area and a few years on meet Nan and you in the area, some good times to be had. Catch up with you soon Ian