" To the good looking gentleman or woman or to whom it may concern,
As a hobby gold fossicker / prospector who has very little impact on the environment with my hobby, I would like to voice my support for the proposal of removing the requirement to obtain a permit for small-scale gold mining activities.
The cost and nausea of getting a a permit to "fossick, scratch in the weeds and under rocks" is not worth it. Many people love the outdoors and there is an adventurer in all of us and it is something I love to show my young children. As it stands at present, unless you are fossicking in one of the "public fossicking areas" or have paid out a lot of money to get a licence to prospect a given patch of land, you are breaking the law. Many of us fossick for gold, not to get rich or make any money at all. I have been scratching around many years but I doubt if I would have found enough to pay for a cup of coffee, especially with Murchison prices.
I would like to see the requirement for a permit for "hobbyists" to be removed or replaced with a system which is affordable, easily managed and will allow us to search for the small amounts of gold with equipment that can be easily carried and will not damage the environment in such a scale as the big industrials do.
I also believe that consideration should be given to the use of hand held metal detectors in the search for gold, making sure that such a low impact activity is not unnecessarily confined to streams, rivers and coastal areas. With a metal detector, generally you can pin point an object to a very small area, dig down then easily fill the hole again after retrieval. Looking for gold any other way usually entails digging a lot of gravel to, hopefully find a small amount of gold.
I look forward to the legislation being improved for us hobbyists."
Hope I haven't bored anyone to tears with my plea for sanity
WWW
