Grey nomad gold prospectors are really making their presence felt this year in destinations such as Marble Bar in Western Australia. The East Pilbara town has already welcomed a record number of prospectors … and they just keep on coming.
Local mining registrar Bob Mulligan told the ABC they had issued well over 60 visitor prospecting passes so far this year, whereas normally he would expect it to be fewer than 10.
“This is the ideal time of the year to be up here, it’s a bit cooler,” he said. “But it certainly seems to be busier than in previous years.”
And he said gold hunters were having some success.
“I’ve seen one three ounce nugget this year, a couple of two ounce nuggets and quite a number of one ounce nuggets as well,” he told the ABC. “So there’s still good size nuggets being found and they’re just the ones that have been brought in to us at the office.”
Lynnie Pedemonte from Port Lincoln in South Australia told the ABC that she and her husband had found a lot of tin, a lot of nails and a lot of bullets … as well as few grams of gold.
But she said it was as much about the camaraderie as the gold.
“If you go to a caravan park and you’ve got 10 or 20 prospectors there, usually they’re quite happy to share their tales of where they’ve been and they love to show you their gold,” she told the ABC. “It’s quite a culture in the park, you meet some great people and some of them have been doing it for 30 or 40 years.”
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