I had always believed that a lot of part time or visitor prospectors have been prospecting on Active Tenements when they had no right to be there. Why do I think that, firstly travelling many kilometers most of the good dirt is on Active leases. You can certainly go on these, and detect providing you have the right permissions etc... You can drive through these as well.
Lets take an example of a tourist, you lob into Kalgoorlie, get your miners right. Have a quick chat to the people at the desk. Great all I have to do is look at Tengraph to see what is taken. Firstly Tengraph is a PITA to work with, very slow not user friendly and unless fairly experienced PC user you would give up after about 10 minutes. Providing you can even get past the registration etc... You ask is there an easier way, they may say something like "Sure the mine 20k's down the road is ok with prospectors just keep away from the mine itself" great. So you forget about Tengraph.
Out in the bush you have a Topo map, probably (hopefully) and if you are real pro you may have a Geo Map as well. Certainly nothing about tenements. You can see some old mines on the Topo and decide to head in that direction. You come across a nice outcrop that looks like too many haven't already gone on it, so bang out with the detectors and Bingo a nice target. Wow this is easy. A little later you have a fair bit on board and decide to head back into town.
So that is a typical scenario I reckon for a lot of the tourists, how about the regulars. What would they do ? Reading an old Gem and Treasure magazine I came across an article that like most of them is just written with fairly loose descriptions of where they go. For obvious reasons. It wasn't until towards the end with talk on Google Earth and then a picture showing points on the map. That I was able to pinpoint exactly where they are referencing. So it was either an as example - or a screen shot of where he had looked through, I tend to think the later. So I looked it up and all around these spots are active tenements, not a square inch of spare dirt. To make it more interesting there was a least 10 or so different tenement holders. So to get permission from all of them would seem highly unlikely.
So what is the go, if they haven't the right permission and it was where they worked. They have around 20oz of someone else's Gold. Times that by a few hundred more "ignorant" is bliss prospectors and this will add up.
It certainly makes it hard for us guys trying to do the right thing.
So those of you that do go out there, do you know if you should or should not be where you are !
Lets take an example of a tourist, you lob into Kalgoorlie, get your miners right. Have a quick chat to the people at the desk. Great all I have to do is look at Tengraph to see what is taken. Firstly Tengraph is a PITA to work with, very slow not user friendly and unless fairly experienced PC user you would give up after about 10 minutes. Providing you can even get past the registration etc... You ask is there an easier way, they may say something like "Sure the mine 20k's down the road is ok with prospectors just keep away from the mine itself" great. So you forget about Tengraph.
Out in the bush you have a Topo map, probably (hopefully) and if you are real pro you may have a Geo Map as well. Certainly nothing about tenements. You can see some old mines on the Topo and decide to head in that direction. You come across a nice outcrop that looks like too many haven't already gone on it, so bang out with the detectors and Bingo a nice target. Wow this is easy. A little later you have a fair bit on board and decide to head back into town.
So that is a typical scenario I reckon for a lot of the tourists, how about the regulars. What would they do ? Reading an old Gem and Treasure magazine I came across an article that like most of them is just written with fairly loose descriptions of where they go. For obvious reasons. It wasn't until towards the end with talk on Google Earth and then a picture showing points on the map. That I was able to pinpoint exactly where they are referencing. So it was either an as example - or a screen shot of where he had looked through, I tend to think the later. So I looked it up and all around these spots are active tenements, not a square inch of spare dirt. To make it more interesting there was a least 10 or so different tenement holders. So to get permission from all of them would seem highly unlikely.
So what is the go, if they haven't the right permission and it was where they worked. They have around 20oz of someone else's Gold. Times that by a few hundred more "ignorant" is bliss prospectors and this will add up.
It certainly makes it hard for us guys trying to do the right thing.
So those of you that do go out there, do you know if you should or should not be where you are !
