LINKS

There are many more useful links out there than I could possibly list here, so I’ve tried to put together a list focussed mainly on Tasmanian resources, plus a few handy outside ones.

The Law

  • The Act that regulates mining, exploration, fossicking and prospecting in Tasmania is the Mineral Resources Development Act 1995. I would recommend reading at least Part 5, which covers fossicking and prospecting, and Section 3, which contains definitions. Know your rights!. It’s common for bureaucrats to try and tell you you can’t do stuff you’re entitled to do. Unfortunately it’s up to us to know our rights.

 Forums

  • Prospecting Tasmania has active discussions on prospecting topics, interesting historical articles, and occasional member trips. Despite its name, it covers other types of fossicking and prospecting, as well as coin and relic hunting.
  • The Prospecting Australia forum is very active and has regular discussion on Tasmanian topics.
  • The Gold Detecting and Prospecting Forum on 4umer is not as active but has a decent amount of information and topics on Tasmania

Clubs and societies

  • The Tasmanian Lapidary and Mineral Association’s contact page has contact details for several Tasmanian associations.
  • The Prospectors and Miners Association of Tasmania became incorporated in 2015 to promote fossicking and prospecting in Tasmania. They provide a unified voice in order to get a better deal for fossickers, prospectors and small-scale miners. I strongly encourage you to join up if you like prospecting in Tasmania.

Other regulations pertaining to fossicking and prospecting

  • The website of Mineral Resources Tasmania has an information page on Prospecting and Fossicking in Tasmania.
  • If you have a prospecting licence, there will also be regulations printed on your physical licence.
  • If you plan to fossick within a mineral tenement or licence area (mining lease, exploration licence), MRT helpfully provide a pro-forma approval to prospect within a tenement.

Research

  • Much of the library at Mineral Resources Tasmania is digitised.
  • The National Library of Australia’s Trove Database contains a huge amount of digitised, out-of-copyright material, including most newspapers.

Maps

  • LISTmap can be used to overlay land ownership and reserve category data over maps of Tasmania. NOTE: Mineral tenements in LISTmap are often not up to date, for those use MRTmap.
  • Geoscience Australia have plenty of online tools, including scans of all 1:250,000 geological maps of Australia.

Other blogs

  • Bedrock Dreams. Based in the US and mostly about US gold, but this blog has a HUGE amount of advice and know-how which equally applies over here.

If you like the content at Apple Isle Prospector, feel free to get in contact, or leave a comment. Let others know by sharing it on Facebook or liking our Facebook or Twitter pages: