Gold Prospecting in Western Australia: A First-Hand Guide for Enthusiasts and Beginners

GOLD PROSPECTING IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

A First-Hand Guide for Enthusiasts and Beginners

By Arthur Brick

Originally written October 2023. Revised June 2026.

DISCLAIMER: This article is provided for general information and entertainment purposes only. While the author has made every effort to ensure accuracy, no responsibility is accepted for any errors, omissions, or changes in laws, regulations, or conditions since the time of writing. Gold prospecting regulations, lease conditions, permit fees, and land access rules are subject to change. Always verify current requirements with the WA Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration (DMPE) before prospecting. Gold prices, business ownership details, and population figures cited reflect information available at the time of writing. The author accepts no liability for any loss, injury, or damage arising from activities undertaken as a result of reading this article. Prospecting in remote areas carries inherent risks. Always take appropriate precautions, inform someone of your whereabouts, and carry adequate emergency equipment and communication devices.

How It All Started

The reason Ann and I took up gold prospecting had nothing to do with Western Australia, where we live. It happened thousands of kilometres away, in a caravan park on the New South Wales-Queensland border. We were on our second long trip around Australia when the chance encounter occurred. Our neighbours turned out to be gold prospectors who had been working in WA since 2008.

After joining them for a happy hour and seeing the gold nuggets they had found, we made a decision. We lived in WA. Why weren't we doing this? We settled on the Australian winter of 2012 to give it a try, when it's cold at night, the flies are less plentiful and the snakes have gone to bed. There were many more happy hours to follow.

The Setting: Western Australia's Goldfields

Gold prospecting and fossicking in WA has grown enormously in popularity, with thousands of prospectors travelling from every Australian state and territory. We have also met people who have come from the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the USA and New Zealand. We were joining what you might call the 21st century gold rush.

WA covers about one-third of Australia but has a population of only 3.6 million, of which 2.4 million live in the Perth urban area. Most of the remainder live in coastal areas to the north and south. The largest inland town is the gold mining city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, with a population of around 38,000. Nearly all other surviving towns from the original gold rush have a small or very small resident population. Many are derelict, or exist only on a map.

While there are many operational mines in WA, most workers in the iron ore, gold, copper, nickel, lithium, rare earths and other mines travel in on a Fly-in-Fly-out (FIFO) basis from Perth and other capital cities. Miners live in dongas near the mines and typically work two-week swings of 12-hour shifts. As a result, the permanent resident population in the arid interior remains small.

What to Expect Out There

Finding gold with a metal detector is not easy, but it is an enjoyable hobby that can be profitable and is, at the time of writing, non-taxable for self-found gold. It is also interesting, exciting and occasionally hair-raising. Patience and perseverance proved invaluable, qualities I had picked up over many hours fishing with my father. Gold prospecting demands exactly the same.

Unlike fishing, though, prospecting is a good way to exercise and keep fit. You spend hours walking in pigeon steps, bending, kneeling, swinging a detector coil like a hovercraft skirt and digging into stony ground wherever metal is detected. Hopefully the target is gold, but the odds can be 20 to 1 that it is something else. Whatever it is, you still have to face that difficult task that comes with old age: rising from a kneeling position on rocky ground to a standing position, and starting all over again.

In most goldfields areas, rain is rare and the ground is normally bone dry, which makes detecting pleasant and, when you find something, very gratifying. You never forget the first nugget. Each one after that continues to be an exhilarating experience that gives you the impetus to keep going. It may be gold fever, but it definitely helps you forget aches and pains.

Where to Look and What You Need to Know

It is essential to know where gold has been found in WA, where it is legal to prospect, and how to access the information you need. Sources include the WA Government, the internet, the history of gold in WA, YouTube, metal detecting shops, other prospectors and your own accumulated experience.

Gold was first discovered in WA in 1885, in the Kimberley region. Further finds followed at Marble Bar, Yalgoo and Southern Cross. Travelling east from Southern Cross, the discovery in 1892 and 1893 of substantial alluvial gold in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie triggered a manic gold rush. Only prospectors wealthy enough to own a horse and cart, or afford an Afghan with camels, could transport the necessary supplies 600 kilometres east from Perth. They then spread in all directions from Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie into what is now known as the Goldfields. Modern 4WD vehicles and sensitive metal detectors make it possible to go further afield and find gold throughout WA.

The arrival of tens of thousands of poorly equipped people caused many deaths from typhoid, heat stroke, thirst or simply getting lost. The cemeteries are full but few have headstones. Only a small number made their fortune. One lasting legacy of early prospecting and transport is that Australia now has more wild camels than any other country, along with wild donkeys, horses and feral pigs. You are warned to be wary of male camels.

There is very little surface water in outback WA, so early prospectors dug small shallow holes and sieved the material, then used wind or bellows to dry-blow the finest material and expose any gold. Hundreds of small heaps of various sized stones, from large rocks to dust, were left in productive areas and many are still visible today. These dry-blowing areas and the surroundings of abandoned mines are worth detecting with a metal detector.

In later years, some productive areas became the target for much larger open-cut and underground mines, resulting in huge hills of non-productive rock, red dirt and tailings. The Boddington open-cut gold mine, only 130 kilometres south-east of Perth, is currently the largest in WA and produces in excess of 700,000 ounces of gold each year, recently eclipsing the superpit in Kalgoorlie (owned by Northern Star) which has announced plans to increase annual production to 900,000 ounces. It is unlikely that mining companies will grant permission to prospect near heavily mined areas.

Gold does not grow again. Once it is gone, it is gone. Productive alluvial gold areas have been detected many times since the 1970s and 1980s, when detectors were of poor sensitivity and missed much of the smaller and deeper gold. Areas were often skimmed or pushed using bulldozers or backhoe buckets to remove surface metal and expose deeper ground. The process removed most rusty surface metal including food tins, steel beer cans, shotgun pellets and other metallic rubbish left by earlier prospectors.

Pushing can only be done by the owners of prospecting, mining or exploration leases and has continued for 50 years. Metal detectors have become far more sensitive and are now capable of detecting gold as small as a pinhead near the surface, and theoretically large nuggets at a depth of one metre. It is well worth prospecting pushed areas where the work was done 40 or 50 years ago and the bush has regrown. Evidence of pushing can be seen on Google Earth.

Licences, Leases and the Law

Before you go anywhere, you must purchase a WA Miner's Right Licence from an office of the WA Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration (DMPE). At the time of writing, the fee was $30, the licence lasts a lifetime, and with certain limitations it allows you to travel over and prospect on Crown land anywhere in WA. Note: fees and conditions may have changed since this article was written.

Unfortunately, a lot of Crown land has already been leased. To determine what is available to prospect, the DMPE offers a free website called Tengraph, a spatial mapping system that displays the areas, numbers and ownership of WA tenancies, plus active and closed mines and geology. Prospecting is legal on vacant Crown land (shown in white) or pending prospecting leases (blue). Permission from the owner is required for live mining and prospecting tenancies (shown in green).

Miner's Right holders can apply for a Section 40E permit to prospect on a granted exploration lease for up to three months, for a fee of AUD $116 (at the time of writing). As exploration leases account for more than 80 per cent of the total area of issued leases, a 40E permit can be very worthwhile. Each permit can cover up to three prospectors, but applications must be made at least three weeks in advance.

Prospectors must also take all reasonable steps to notify pastoralists of their intentions. Pastoral leases, used mainly for cattle, cover many hundreds of square kilometres and include numerous mining leases. Bore water is pumped to surface troughs by windmills or solar-powered pumps and may be turned off annually to concentrate cattle for mustering. Any missed bulls are likely to get old and cantankerous.

What You'll Encounter in the Bush

It is rare to meet anyone else when prospecting in the bush, as permanent residents are very few. Encounters with young cattle, kangaroos, emus and goats are fairly common. Occasional sightings of dingoes, goannas, donkeys, camels, pigs, horses, rabbits, snakes, lizards, wedge-tailed eagles, parrots and smaller birds, including flocks of green budgies, are all on the cards. We have met very few prospectors, three pastoral lease owners and a few Aboriginal people. Entry to Aboriginal heritage sites is prohibited.

Equipment: What You Need

The most important piece of equipment for safe prospecting is a good, reliable 4WD vehicle, followed by good prospecting equipment, comfortable clothing and adequate communication and location devices. We used a 2007 100-series Toyota Land Cruiser wagon that had been used by an executive of an outback gas pipeline company and included many extras that made it ideal for WA bush prospecting. Land Cruisers have proven reliability and are the preferred 4WD, though Land Rovers and Nissan Patrols have their dedicated followers.

Jeans, a fluorescent shirt and sturdy boots with no steel toecaps are essential for rough, rocky terrain. A broad-brimmed hat, sunglasses and a fly net are often a necessity, and knee pads are recommended to save yourself from kneeling on sharp rocks and thorny plants.

Good metal detectors are not cheap, but it is best to spend as much as you can afford. You get what you pay for. Minelab metal detectors are the preferred make for detecting gold in Australia. We currently use the Minelab SDC2300 and GPX6000, which are mainly self-adjusting to changes in ground mineralisation and electromagnetic interference. They are ideal for older prospectors as they are light, compact, very sensitive, easy to use and rechargeable.

A detector harness with a bungee cord takes some weight off and enables many hours of swinging the wand. Pockets around the harness waistband are useful for an essential bottle of water, an emergency radio beacon, a satellite phone if out of mobile range, a power bank, spare batteries, a whistle and a lighter. The lighter is to start a fire and make smoke if you get lost. The whistle is for rescuers to hear. A prospecting pickaxe with a powerful magnet on the blade fits into a holder on the waistband, and a small plastic scoop on a piece of string completes the necessities. A mobile phone, handheld GPS and handheld CB radio on lanyards around your neck round out the kit.

A mobile phone with the Trilobite Solutions app installed is invaluable. The app uses GPS technology, Google Earth and Tengraph data to show your position and trail, the borders and ownership of tenancies, locations of active and closed mines, and other mining and geological information. It lets you stay within permitted tenancies, know where you are, where you have been, and where you found gold. It must be manually updated regularly and it is also an excellent tool for getting you back to your vehicle.

An optional extra is a heavy chain on a rope attached to the back of your harness, which leaves a line in the dry, stony red dirt and prevents you from detecting over the same area twice. A pill bottle, or something larger, is essential for the gold you hope to find.

Completely weighed down and equipped, you are ready to go and find the big nugget that has eluded all others.

Part Two: In the Field

Many bush tracks are visible on Google Earth using the Trilobite app, and before venturing into the outback it is advisable to do some homework. Identify the productive and legal areas you wish to prospect, then mark the Trilobite maps on your iPhone or iPad with the locations where bush tracks join main roads and dirt roads, and mark the tracks to areas you want to detect. Off-track bush bashing can result in many punctures and considerable expense. An emergency puncture repair kit and a 12-volt tyre pump should be in your vehicle.

It is estimated that between 0.5 and 1.0 per cent of WA has alluvial gold. The original prospectors were very good at finding gold-bearing areas, and evidence of dry blowing, old mines and pushing are good indicators that an area is worth detecting. Unfortunately, the early prospectors and miners left a great deal of rubbish. The most common items are rusty bits of steel from canned food, including oval tins of Cornish pilchards and rectangular tins of corned beef, plus many different sizes of round tins and WD and HO Wills and Players tobacco tins. When they did not eat canned food, they shot kangaroos, emus, rabbits and goannas with guns. We have found thousands of used cartridges and shells, lead shotgun pellets, lead balls and bullets of many calibres. We have also found live bullets, bottle tops, nails and screws of every type and size, buttons, buckles, horse shoe clips, pins, needles, a thimble, hair grips, bits of wire, horseshoes, chisels, hammer and axe heads, drill bits, mugs, pots, pans, tent pegs, rivets, spades, shovels, picks, lumps of lead, pre-decimal pennies, two silver threepenny bits and a number of more recent Australian decimal coins. In some areas there is also the problem of aluminium foil left by more recent users of illegal substances. The excitement is never-ending.

We are still looking for the prospector who died with 100 ounces of gold in his hand, or the disintegrated pocket that was reportedly full of sovereigns.

Our Results: The Gold We Found

All is not doom and gloom. In the 13 years from 2012 to 2024, prospecting an average of six hours a day, six days a week, for six weeks of each year, we found 27 ounces of gold. Each troy ounce equals 31.1 grams, and it has taken us an average of at least three or four nuggets or specks to make one gram. The smallest specks were less than 0.1 of a gram, and the largest single finds were 21 grams and 28 grams of gold, both contained within lumps of quartz.

It takes around 100 nuggets on average to make an ounce, and we accumulated approximately 2,700 nuggets and specks to reach 27 ounces. Other metallic objects account for about 95 per cent of signals, bringing the total number of finds to around 54,000. Each find means walking, stopping, digging a hole, checking the location of the signal, putting the stony dirt into a plastic trowel, waving it over the coil to locate the source, removing dirt until the object is identified and, if it is gold, popping it into the pill bottle, using the pick handle to get back to a standing position, and recording the coordinates on the GPS.

In addition to pure gold nuggets, we have found specimens of gold embedded in quartz and ironstone. To clean dirty gold, we immerse the nuggets in acid for a few days to remove impurities. Any remaining rock containing embedded gold is crushed and the material placed into a gold pan with water. After steady swirls, the heavier gold settles at the bottom of the pan and is sucked up through a tube connected to a flexible plastic bottle. The process is repeated until the gold is clean.

To continue purifying, we use a practical bush method: cut a large potato in half, scoop out a circular hollow to make an improvised crucible, place the dirty gold inside and cover it with borax from the supermarket laundry section. A blowtorch is used to heat the mix until the gold melts and separates from residual stone to leave a small globule of almost pure gold, which is then plunged into cold water. Gold buyers use electronic equipment to assess purity. After processing, the nuggets are typically around 96 per cent pure.

The 27 ounces of gold found is worth approximately GBP £95,500 or AUD $181,500 (April 2026). You may have worked out that this has taken around 78 weeks in total. We sold 11 ounces in 2017 and bought a car with the proceeds. Our grown-up children will have the remainder in gold or cash equivalent if they look after us. We have since been told the gold specimens are worth more than the gold they contain, if you can find the right buyer. We live and learn.

Seasons, Snakes and Other Encounters

The best time of year to prospect in WA is late autumn, winter and early spring, roughly May to October. In 15 years of prospecting in the Australian winter, I have encountered only one snake. I waved the detector coil over what I thought was a black stick and it came to life. It was a venomous dugite, which wriggled slowly in the opposite direction and disappeared down a hole.

The most frightening encounter, though, was with a bull. It was a windy day and I had my headphones on. Whirlwinds whistled through the bush and I thought I heard a noise four times that I put down to the wind. On the fifth occasion I looked up and saw an enormous black bull of Spanish bullfighting proportions, head down, great horns pointing in my direction. He was only 20 metres away, snorting, bellowing, scraping the ground with his front foot and creating a lot of dust. Every hair on my body stood on end.

I remembered being told to stand still. I had no option anyway. There was no red cloth and no trees to get behind, so I raised the big white coil of the detector in his direction. Nothing changed. Expecting a charge at any moment and briefly entertaining visions of being a short-lived matador, I put the pick in my right hand and the detector in my left and yelled as loud as I could. Nothing changed. I called Ann on the CB radio. She was sitting in the car 200 metres away and had heard the noise. I asked her to drive our two-and-a-half-tonne white Land Cruiser down the track with headlights on and the horn blasting. The bull looked up, looked back at me, looked up again, turned around and trotted away. You are warned about male camels. Nobody warns you about bulls. I have not used headphones since. An additional reason for this is that headphones cause hearing aids to make very unwanted noises.

A further experience was somewhat tamer. We were sitting in the car having lunch when a large black plastic bag about 80 metres away suddenly grew four legs and moved rapidly from right to left in front of us. It was a very big black cat with a long tail, possibly a puma or panther. We both saw it clearly. I had apparently been prospecting in the vicinity of a big black cat. Close encounters with kangaroos happen frequently, but even the big red kangaroos just hop away. The odd thing about kangaroos is that quite often when you are driving along a bush track you do not see them until they hop up alongside the car and then jump across the track directly in front of you.

Safety in the Bush

Once you have decided where you are going to detect, tell someone the lease number or area and the time you expect to be back. Every year some prospectors and 4WD drivers get lost in the bush. Most are found. A few die before they are found. One or two are never found. It is easy to become disoriented when you walk in circles around a hole you are digging. As we usually stay at Leonora caravan park, informing someone of our intentions is straightforward.

After arriving at your area, park in the shade of a tree and survey the landscape for features that can help you find your way back. Walk towards or away from the sun initially, and check that your Trilobite app is on with position and trail activated. Move the detector coil low and slow, as close to the ground as possible, in a level arc before taking a small step forward after each sweep. A loud signal may indicate a large nugget near the surface. A faint signal may mean a small surface nugget or a large, deep one. In a previously mined area it is most likely to be something else metallic. In a virgin area the chances of gold are much better.

Gold is often found in patches. Good advice is to walk until you find a patch. When asked where you found your gold, the honest answer is: in the ground.

Reading the Landscape

Old gold mines often followed reefs and appear as fairly straight lines on Google Earth maps. Detecting along projected extensions of these lines, and to either side, may be profitable. However, areas that have not been subjected to intense metal detecting over the years may be more productive overall.

There are no hard and fast rules about where gold might be, but the presence of scattered lumps of quartz, particularly veined or dirty quartz, or a salt-and-pepper mix of quartz and ironstone, can be a promising sign. Areas between quartz and ironstone outcrops are also worth investigating. Other promising areas include those with a scattering of surface quartz and no trees or bushes, suggesting shallow soil that may contain detectable alluvial gold. Exposed bedrock is often encountered along bush tracks and the surrounding area has an increased chance of being productive. Creeks, and particularly the banks of creeks passing through any of these areas, are definitely worth a look. We have certainly become better at identifying likely productive areas and now have very few completely barren days.

The Towns: A Brief History

We started our gold prospecting adventure in Coolgardie in 2012. After three weeks we had found nothing but rubbish. We bypassed Kalgoorlie, 40 kilometres away, and travelled a further 130 kilometres north along the Goldfields Highway to Menzies, where gold was discovered in 1895. By 1901 Menzies was the centre of many mines and had a population of 10,000. When we stopped there in 2012 it was a virtual ghost town with one hotel/pub/shop, a lovely town hall, a few scattered houses, a caravan park and a population of 109, now reduced to 96. A week there yielded more rubbish and no gold.

We journeyed a further 70 kilometres north-east to Kookynie, a town also created after gold was found in 1895. Several major mines were established in the area and by 1907 the town had 14 hotels and a population of over 4,000. When we arrived in 2012 it was a ghost town with one 'hotel' that was also a fuel station and post office, with a basic two-bay powered caravan site. Electricity at the 1903-built Grand Hotel was generated by a diesel generator that was turned off at 9:00pm or when the last customer left. The hotel was for sale. We found our first gold nugget, weighing 3 grams, on a pending prospecting tenancy about 10 kilometres north of the town. In the following week we found 15 nuggets of between 0.2 and 3 grams. Eureka!

In subsequent years we visited the hotel on a number of occasions to see Margaret and Kevin, the owners. Kookynie is, or was, a one-horse town with 12 residents, four dogs and a horse called Willie. One day in 2015 a horse walked into the bar, drank all the water from the dogs' bowl and a further four buckets of water. He has been a permanent resident of the pub ever since, standing across the front door to stop you until you offer a carrot or a slice of bread. There was also a second rescued horse called Sherrie. (Search: Grand Hotel Kookynie.) The eight-bedroom hotel was still for sale in 2024 for AUD $500,000 (GBP £260,000). Unfortunately Kevin had a stroke, but Margaret continued to run the hotel, which was sold in late 2025. We hope to visit in 2026 to wish the new owners good luck.

Leonora: Our Home Base

For 13 years since 2012, we have headed for Leonora, about 80 kilometres north of Kookynie, 250 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie and 850 kilometres (approximately 500 miles) by road from Perth. We are not hardened outback campers and enjoy the comfort of our caravan in a park with mains electricity, water, showers, toilets, a washing machine and a camp kitchen, plus our own TV, warmth and a comfortable bed. The evening campfire provides the opportunity for productive conversations and a drink or two with professional and hobby prospectors and grey nomads alike. The cost for a week on a powered caravan site has now increased to AUD $260 (GBP £140 approximately). Self-catering dongas are available for those without their own accommodation.

Leonora has a resident population of about 1,500 and is the largest inland town north of Kalgoorlie. Gold was discovered there in 1896, leading to the creation of many mines in the surrounding area.

Sons of Gwalia and Herbert Hoover

The largest gold mine near Leonora was discovered in 1896 and named 'Sons of Gwalia' by three Welshmen. They sold it to George Hall for GBP £5,000 in 1897. He recovered his outlay within one month but sought additional capital from the London company Bewick-Moreing. They sent a young American mining engineer named Herbert Hoover to assess the site. He recommended they buy it, and GBP £100,000 was duly paid. Hoover managed the mine and was responsible for building Hoover House nearby, before leaving in 1898 and returning in 1902 as a partner of Bewick-Moreing and manager of their WA interests. In 1929 he became President of the United States.

The Gwalia mine brought about a small adjacent shanty town of mainly timber-framed, corrugated iron shacks with hessian internal partitions and dirt floors. These were the family homes of around 1,200 people, supported mainly by Italian mine workers whom Hoover employed to cut costs. Hoover House, the schoolhouse, police station, jail, a state-owned hotel and a row of shops were the only substantial buildings. The mine closed in 1963 and the town became a ghost town. It has been the subject of preservation since 1971 and parts of the shanty town still exist. A lunchtime meal at Hoover House is recommended.

Ownership of the Gwalia mine transferred to St Barbara Limited in more recent years, and it is now an open-pit mine with an underground component that goes to a depth of 1,700 metres, with a proposed depth of 2,300 metres by 2031. It is the deepest underground trucking mine in the world. The dump trucks are enormous and take up most of both lanes of a normal road. If a wide load pilot vehicle and escorting police car comes towards you on the highway, it is absolutely essential to pull onto the hard shoulder.

Until 30 June 2023, St Barbara Limited owned many mining and prospecting leases and for 12 years gave us permission to access and prospect their non-operational tenancies, in exchange for logging our hours and the locations of any gold found. Those hours were then reported to DMPE to offset the annual cost of the tenancy. The Leonora assets of St Barbara were acquired by Genesis Minerals Limited on 30 June 2023. Access to prospect is now only available on four of the numerous tenements owned by the company. It is more difficult than before to obtain permission from mining companies to prospect on their tenancies.

Recent Years

To prevent the spread of Covid, the WA Premier closed the state's borders to visitors in 2020-21, and the bush was very empty. The outback is so vast that even in 2022 it was rare to see another prospector, but numbers have more than doubled in the past 10 years. In 2012, Leonora caravan park was only half full. In 2024 it was fully booked from May to September and the number of off-road caravans on the Goldfields Highway has increased dramatically. Gold is now harder to find, but in five weeks during June and July 2024 I managed around 150 nuggets totalling 57 grams. Rather better than most, with caravan park neighbours finding only one or two tiny specks.

Other Finds Worth Mentioning

We have also found a few interesting bottles, including a very heavy complete Codd marble bottle (the kind known as a 'pop alley' bottle) made by Cannington-Shaw of St Helens, a Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce bottle with a glass stopper, a couple of small Bovril jars, a Chesebrough Co. New York jar (pre-Vaseline, possibly), a Chesebrough jar marked Vaseline, and a bottle with a broken top bearing the name STEPHENS SON and CO GLOUCESTER. We have come across heaps of intact beer and wine bottles that we left where they were, and millions of smashed ones. Perhaps I should have the courage to go down old mine shafts to see what has been thrown in. On reflection, I am probably old enough now to know better.

Final Thoughts

Whatever the future holds, we have genuinely loved our WA gold prospecting experience. It is something very different from a normal winter holiday. Except for the flies, the air in the outback is healthy, fresh and dry. It gets in your blood.

Arthur Brick is a retired prospector based near Perth, WA. He and his wife Ann have been prospecting the WA goldfields since 2012. In June 2026 Arthur was near Leonora, having found approximately 16 grams of gold in 17 days.