ABOUT US

Meet the “Prospecting Family”, Bernd, Petra, Ben and Oliver.

When we migrated from Germany over 25 years ago, we had little idea that all our future life in Australia would evolve around gold. Our planed trip around Australia never took place. Instead we started to dredge for fine gold in the Gippsland rivers.

It all began with a weekend fishing trip to the Goulbourn River, where we met a prospector just panning off his concentrates from a day’s work with his dredge. Three weeks later we were back with a s/h wetsuit and a small 3 inch dredge. Never have we worked this hard for a few grams of gold than in those first few weeks!

Two years later - we had upgraded to a 5” Keene dredge and a proper fitting wetsuit – working in the rivers was still difficult. Rain often caused floods and work was impossible in muddy water. A visit from a prospector just returning from the West Australien Goldfields and looking at his nuggets that actually weighted heavy in your hand instead of the tiny flakes we were getting, changed our life again.

In 1984, we went for the first time to the “Golden West” across the Nullabor. On board our 1 year old son, Rocky, our Cocker, the budgie (which nearly got confiscated at the “Fruit fly control” at the border) and a brand new Garret Groundhog.



Having absolutely no idea, where to start prospecting in WA, we referred to a cheerful story in “Gold, Gem & Treasure” by Bruce Legendre. It told us, how he started off by talking to locals in the Leonora pub. This gave us hope. Finally we arrived at the “Whitehouse”, only to find, that Leonora was crowded with tourists and locals would for sure not give any secrets away.

After several weeks of exploring and learning as we went (and meeting some very helpful people out in the bush), we ended up in the pub again one night. Here we met the author of the inspiring story, Bruce and his brother Joe (we were actually attracting by the unusual bulges in their socks, which later revealed to be 40 ounces of gold). This was the start of a long friendship and many new ventures.



Another good friend way back from that time in Leonora is David de Havelland, who was able to “squeeze out” nuggets of all our hard worked patches in Yandal. David was just amazing with the detector. He is well known today to most prospectors for his books “Gold & Ghosts”, which provide immense information about many Australian goldfields.

Although we were involved in different businesses, once we settled down in Perth in the late 80’s, Gold was always our main interest. No school holidays would pass without at least a quick trip into the goldfields. The little boy in the above photo has grown into a handsome young man. He has completed his studies in geology and environmental science and is the favourite prospecting partner for Petra. Mother and son seem to make a good team. The short trips in the last 3 years were all quite successful and resulted in new patches between 2 and 35 ounces.

Our production has remarkably increased, since the SD series got introduced by Minelab.



Our youngest son Oliver has detected several nuggets on his own, but being a teenager now, his interests now are more city related.

See you out there sometimes – there is plenty of gold left – we know!

Several ounces of river gold

Bernd with his 5" Keene dredge

Bruce and Ben in 1986

Ben working on a 35 ounce enrichment