Prospecting

Prospectors are people who search for valuable mineral deposits. Prospectors search for gemstones, semi-precious stones or rocks, mineral specimens, or gold. Many prospectors search for minerals in their spare time, but there are others who do it for a living. Either way there is a lot of skill and technical knowledge involved in prospecting for minerals, but there is also some degree of luck.

Prospectors use special tools and techniques to help them find minerals. They also need an understanding of how the minerals form so they can prospect in areas that are more likely to host the minerals they are searching for. Prospectors can, once they have discovered a mineralised zone, become involved in mining the minerals for which they are searching.

Before a prospector can do any of this they need to be aware of the regulations and be properly prepared for this activity.

Prospectors must:

• Have a Miner’s Right
• Be aware of the relevant parts of the Mining Act that apply to prospecting
• Know the type of land on which you are prospecting and get the appropriate permission that applies to pastoral leases, unallocated Crown land, grazing leases, reserves for Common, Mining and Public Utility.
  
  You need to:
  1. Have written permission from the tenement holder if you are prospecting on a mining tenement.
  2. Notify the pastoralist if you intend to prospect on a pastoral lease ( in some cases you may need written consent).
  3. Have a current Miners Right, to access granted exploration licences.
• Only use hand-held tools
• Not remove more than 20 kilograms of samples
• Not undertake strip mining
• Notify the tenement and land holders when you are leaving
• Avoid damage to property and livestock
• Protect the environment by filling all holes, taking away all rubbish, and leaving the area clean and tidy.
  

(This information is taken from Prospecting in Western Australia Your rights and obligations when prospecting Edition 3, March 2002. Department of Industry and Resources WA)

For regulations and obligations regarding prospecting in your state contact your relevant Government Department.

For prospecting fact sheets from each state try these links:

• South Australia
• Queensland
• Tasmania
• New South Wales
• Northern Territory
• Western Australia
• The Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association

Prospecting for Gold in Western Australia

Prospectors have played a major part of the gold mining industry in WA where the majority of today’s gold operations are developed over old workings that were originally found by Prospectors. The important role of making new discoveries will continue for some time as prospectors are still active in exploring Greenfield areas (unexplored areas), while the large companies focus mainly on brownfield exploration (extensions of existing workings).

In the early days the prospectors main tools were his pick, shovel, panning dish and the dolly pot. Gold was found in the old days by recovering it by gravity means. Because gold is much heavier than virtually any other material it is easily separated from non-gold bearing materials by mechanical means particularly flowing water and moving air.

Prospectors use loaming (panning loose sediment and soils containing gold) and dollying (crushing rock to liberate contained gold and then panning. By systematically using these methods prospectors trace shed gold (colour in the pan) progressively up streams and then up slope until no gold was recovered in the pan. At this point they have overrun the gold source which must lie between this and the last sample location. By dollying up the locally exposed rocks and panning the powder the gold source would be discovered.

The prospector would then start sinking a shaft usually involving drilling and blasting. As he got deeper he would use a windlass to raise the ore and waste rock to the surface, he would separate the gold bearing ore from the waste (mullock) and when he had sufficient ore he would cart that to a gold mill for treatment. The State Government had mills (called batteries) placed in active areas of the State to treat prospectors ore. The Government has since sold off their batteries and that has seen the demise of most of this State’s hard rock prospectors (underground miners). Many prospectors now either treat their ore themselves, or have it treated commercially in existing mines.

The other type of gold prospecting is the search for Gold Nuggets. Gold nuggets are solid pieces of gold that lay separately in the soils and are usually shallow in depth about half to one metre deep in the soil. The old method of mining these nuggets was by using moving air (dryblower) or using moving water in a sluice. The sluice requires large amounts of water and as a consequence was not a popular method here locally because of the lack of water. So until relatively recently the dryblower was the popular method used . Hand powered dryblowers could treat about half a tonne an hour compared with about 40 tonne per hour now by mechanical dryblowers.

The finding of nuggets has changed in recent years through the development of new technology particularly the use of electronic metal detectors from around 1976. The advancement in the technology of metal detectors has grown so much one wonders just how much further they can go but they are fundamentally limited in terms of penetration and practical economics to about 1 metre in depth.

(Information sourced from The Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association)