May Winner Spotlight – WA Goldfields Ripper
We’re a little late announcing it, but better late than never — our May Photo Comp Winner has an absolute ripper of a story, and the numbers speak for themselves:
✨ 12.6oz in a week. 24oz in a month.
And that was just the beginning…
🌧 Rain, Mud & A Lucky Find
The trip didn’t start easy — two days of heavy rain kept the detector packed away. But on the third day, the sun broke through and the hunt was on. A couple of hours on new ground turned up just a small piece, but a ride around the scrub soon revealed something interesting: fresh tracks in the mud, leading to an old pushed patch about an acre wide.
No vehicles in sight. Just about ten fresh dig holes.
Curious, he checked around the holes — four of them still gave off signals. Expecting junk, he dug them anyway. To his surprise? Four small nuggets, around 0.3–0.4 grams each.
Turns out the previous diggers had missed a few.
🔎 Working the Patch
Over the next week, he chained the whole area, digging more than 200 holes and pulling around 2.5oz. When a couple of mates dropped in, another 170 nuggets came out in just two days.
Word with a local old-timer confirmed the area had been pushed years ago. With a bit of persistence (and four months of paperwork), he secured approval from the mining company to shallow push a new section — 40m x 60m.
💥 The Honey Hole
Over the next 4 weeks, small sections of topsoil were carefully removed down to the calcrete. Most finds were in the 0.3–4 gram range, with only a handful over 1 gram. Then came the honey hole:
⚡ 6oz pulled from a small pocket, including a standout 32-gram nugget.
By the end, the re-pushed patch produced another 24oz of gold.
✨ The Takeaway
One year on, this patch is still giving up the odd stray nugget — proof that persistence pays and the gold is always out there for those who keep at it.
