New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Hi there, there's very little gold areas in Canterbury and those that are about will no doubt be claimed, you best off sticking to the public areas or working out who owns what (admin gavin has a great new permit update you can request to become part of) generally I go by the rule of thumb if it's not under claim go have a pan or sluice, you've got to know there's gold about if you wish to claim a certain area yourself.

In reality it's not legal as all minerals are owned by the crown, but it's very hard to enforce the law it's even hard for claim owners to prosecute poachers, I even know of guys caught dredging in the public area of the arrow river and the police just moved them on. So for a guy up an river having a play with a pan in my opinion is fine, we even let the odd guy on our claim as they don't do much harm and often tell us if they find good color so it works well.

I think the closest place for you to look that's unclaimed may be the lindis river? A lot of people gather in the camping bays over summer and have a go.

As far as the head waters in Canterbury go there's no reason why gold wouldn't be there, what the old timers considered commercially viable then is way different now, the gold rush boys on tv are happy with 1g per cubic meter! I know areas in the arrow that pay 6g per meter of dirt and were left for richer grounds back in the day. I suppose the price of gold back then was the determined factor.

Good hunting.

Any pan will do, it's all down to technique when using, just watch YouTube for tips. Bigger is better though! Trade me has all the gear you need to start, a pan, a sucker bottle, shovel and small sluice to start. A classifier and bucket if you work slow creeks. Tweezers and optional dive mask or underwater viewer to view the stuff you will miss on the bed rock. (A hand sucker) The list can go on and on until eventually like me you fill your garage and the car has to live outside :) when you find some nice stuff and get the fever you'll quickly learn what you'll need to make life easy.

I stress though the most important aspect is spending lots and lots of hours getting pan technique right, it takes lots of patience to work the concentrates down to blacksand and then to separate the micro gold. You can practice at home in a tub using lead shot or fishing shot, put in say 10 and see how many are left.