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Miners with a heart for gold

"It's a funny game we play," says John Gladdis of Maryborough, a man febrile with gold lust.

And he's right, it is a funny game they play, these people who live and breathe gold and search for it every day. They look for something that might not be there but if it is could change their lives forever.

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High-tech gold prospectors seek their fortune

New technologies are helping prospectors discover gold in areas thought to have been cleared years ago. All it takes is patience, skill and some high-tech equipment.

The gold rush came to central Victoria in 1851. A rush of people from Britain, Ireland, America, New Zealand, China. All the money that was flying around because of all the masses that was found essentially built Melbourne and built Victoria.

Now when you go through towns up this way, west and north-west of Bendigo – Maryborough, Dunolly, Moliagul, Tarnagulla, Wedderburn – the history is evident. So is the branding. It's gold-this and gold-that with all the trinkets and souvenirs a tourist could buy.

But people like John Gladdis and his mate John Nalder are out every day doing the hard yards. John Nalder, 70, says he can sometimes walk 25km in a day looking for gold. That's a whole lot further than a round of golf. "It's a full day for us," he says.

He goes out prospecting with his wife, Marianne. "We'll take salad sandwiches," he says. "Sit down and have a bit of lunch. It's a healthy day out."

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The money, though. The untold riches. Gold isn't called gold for nothing, it's worth its weight in ... well, gold, about $50 a gram at the moment, which is pretty low, but it'll always go up again. It always does.

The second biggest use of gold (after jewellery) is as investments, ingots and bullion. People stock it away and stockpile it. It is safe. The first gold coins were made near Turkey in 600BC.

It's elusive, valuable, and mysterious. It has a magical quality, far removed from the fact that it is just a mineral. The Aztecs thought gold was the excrement of the Sun Gods.

It's no coincidence that if you win at the Olympics you get gold but if you come third you deal with bronze. Still now gold symbolises perfection and the standard by which everything else should be judged. The two Johns have found heaps of it over the years. John Gladdis owns a gold shop in Maryborough where you can buy equipment. The best new metal detectors can cost up to $10,000.

But it's a funny game they play.

For example, it's difficult to talk about the money. Proceeds are theoretically taxed because if you find gold then trade it for cash with a proper gold dealer it's classified as income. But everyone knows the gold economy isn't always transparent.

"I can't hazard a guess how much I've found over the years," says John Gladdis. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions, who knows? There's still a very good living being made by a lot of people around here."

He wanted to be an archaeologist but became an engineer in the car industry but he quit thirty years ago.

"I gave it all away to go full-time prospecting," he says.

Gold diggers in and around Wedderburn and Maryborough area looking for gold. 8 March 2017. The Age News. Photo: Eddie Jim. ( the Welcome Stranger nugget replica is on display at the Dunolly Museum )

A replica of the Welcome Stranger nugget on display at the Dunolly Museum. Photo: Eddie Jim

He found a nugget worth $34,000 once, and quivers with excitement when talking about the 97kg Welcome Stranger nugget (from Moliagul in 1869) or the 27kg Hand of Faith nugget (from nearby Kingower in 1980).

The Hand of Faith was bought by a casino in Las Vegas, the Golden Nugget. Look at the names the big nuggets take, they're named like ancient clipper ships were named, or like racehorses are named, the words used are all about hope and destiny and reward.

John's mate John Nalder is a retired banker. He's from New South Wales but spends around three months a year staying in a caravan park in Maryborough and going out prospecting.

He started 40 years ago just panning in creeks – "once the gold fever gets you," he says, "that's it, you're gone."

He can usually pay for his time in Victoria – accommodation, fuel and meals – with the gold he finds.

Last week he found a piece worth $2000; there's gold found every day in the goldfields still. He has what is called a 'miner's right' which is a ten-year licence that allows him to prospect on Crown land.

The two Johns say that, during the 2008 recession, the bar at the Railway Hotel in Maryborough would be full of blokes with nuggets in their pockets and as the nights wore on the nuggets would be shown around. It's as if in times of crisis, the currency of gold remains, and becomes something that people trust and return to.

No one will really say where or when they strike gold. It's like fishing, but more secretive and way more lucrative. What can you do with a kilogram of fish except pan-fry it? Whereas a kilogram of gold is worth about $50,000.

One odd thing about the way prospectors like the two Johns go about it is that as metal-detecting technology gets better and better the machines can find gold deeper and deeper.

So in many cases the prospectors of today are going over and over the old seams of yesteryear, literally picking up what could not be seen before. Scraping away the earth, trying to find the rocks that are better than money.

Good as Gold

  • The price of gold fluctuates but this week it was worth around $A50 a gram.

  • Australia is the second biggest commercial miner of gold after China.

  • 60 per cent of it is in WA.

  • Gold mine production in Australia was 272 tonnes in 2014-15, according to the Department of Industry and Science.

  • The first gold rush in Australia was around Orange, New South Wales, and in central Victoria in 1851.

  • There was another around Warrandyte in the same year, and then in Tasmania and South Australia later in the 1850's, followed by WA and Queensland.

  • The last recorded gold rush was in 1906 in Tarnagulla, Victoria.

  • Gold is everywhere – in the ocean, in eucalyptus leaves, in human blood, in computer parts, and in the sun.

The Wedderburn Gold Jamboree is held this weekend, March 11 and 12, at Hard Hill Tourist Reserve in Wedderburn