Our reason for venturing out here is to visit Cobbold Gorge, unlike our fellow campers who are all here looking for gold. It wasn't long before some of them were willing to show us exactly what they are looking for. One gentleman showed us a tiny little yellow coloured rock and told us that it was gold. It did not look like gold to me, but others produced all sorts of containers such as medical specimen jars that held some of the spoils from days, weeks of scouring the ground at their secret spot.
These modern day gold prospectors know each other well as they have all been coming here for years. They are using metal detectors or copper rods but really they are just looking for the bigger nuggets. But no one tells anyone else exactly where their secret spot is. One bloke told us that he had come up here each year for 7 years without finding a thing and then found 18 ounces of gold (about $23k) in a few days but he couldn't tell us where he found it. Every prospector is trying to find out from his mate where the secret spot is and everyone is very friendly until you ask that question "where do you go looking for gold"? It is a fascinating sub-culture. It is sort of like the fishing guys who can show you what they caught but can't tell you where they caught it.
The metal detectors also find lots of other things out there in the wilderness, the prospectors are searching on some of the country's large outback cattle stations and some of the other things that are found are the metal spurs from the cowboys boots or the old metal heel protectors, old tobacco and matches tin dating back to the 1800's.
