A WA prospector known for his unique gold-detecting motorcycle is counting his blessings after finding not one, but two gold nuggets weighing a kilogram apiece on a recent prospecting trip through the state.
Gary Tomasovich has been prospecting in every gold region across Australia for more than 50 years and has reached a level of efficiency few can match.
The 69 year old mechanical engineer hunts for the shiny stuff on his stripped-back, air-cooled diesel motorcycle with steel guards and a Minelab gold detector attached. And it’s paid dividends; his recent prospecting trip was extremely successful.
“Recently, I was working a reef in central WA. On top it was okay but as soon as you moved away from the reef the interference was too much. It was heavily mineralised because of all the runoff from the ironstone,” he said.
Mr Tomasovich hopped off the bike and used the hand-held detector.
“About 80 meters from the reef, I got a nice strong signal and there about 2 1/2 feet below the surface I found an 1100-gram nugget,” he said.
“The old heart did start to tick over. You always get excited, especially after you’ve had a couple of dry days.”
After cleaning the nugget it weighed in at 1076 grams. And the finds kept coming.
“I was with a mate working this other area in the eastern goldfields of WA and after six days we’d found bugger all,” Mr Tomasovich said.
“This piece of land sloped down to a deep creek which I liked the look of.”
There, he found a 340 gram nugget and a few smaller pieces and went back to camp.
But over the following days Mr Tomasovich couldn’t get that patch out of his mind.
“I went back to that creek bank which was all loamy soil and gravel and I got this faint signal,” he said.
“So, I started digging and digging and digging. Then at about three-foot deep the detector started screaming, so I dug down another six inches and there she was — 997 grams.”
A kilogram of gold is currently worth about AUD$54,373.
