How to pan for gold: a central-Victoria beginner's guide

What you'll need

The beauty of panning is how little kit it takes. You can walk into a creek with a single pan and come home with colour. A sensible beginner's set-up looks like this:

• A gold pan, a modern plastic pan with moulded riffles along one edge. The riffles catch heavy gold as you wash the lighter material away, so they do a lot of the work for you.
• A classifier (sieve), sits on top of a bucket or your pan and screens out the big rocks and gravel before you start swirling. Classifying first is the single biggest time-saver there is.
• A snuffer bottle, a small squeeze bottle for sucking up the tiny flakes of fine gold. Trying to pinch fines out with wet fingers is a good way to lose them.
• A sample vial, a little screw-top vial with some water in it to hold your finds safely so nothing floats or blows away.

That's genuinely enough to begin. A trowel, a bucket and a pair of gloves round it out nicely.

The technique, step by step

Panning is a rhythm you'll pick up in an afternoon. The whole idea is simple: gold is far heavier than sand and gravel, so if you keep washing the light stuff off the top, the gold works its way to the very bottom and stays there.

• Fill the pan with paydirt. Scoop your classified gravel and sand into the pan until it's about two-thirds full. Don't overload it, a manageable pan is a well-washed pan.
• Submerge and break it up. Lower the pan under the water and work the material with your fingers, crumbling any clay or clumped dirt. Clay traps gold, so break every lump apart.
• Scoop off the rocks. Shake the pan gently so the heavy material settles, then pick or sweep the larger stones off the top with your hand.
• Tilt, swirl and wash. Tip the pan slightly away from you and use a smooth swirling and side-to-side motion, letting a little water carry the lightest sand over the lip. Keep the pan under water as you go so nothing dries and sticks.
• Work down to the black sand. Repeat the shake-and-swirl until only a spoonful of dense, dark, heavy material, the black sand, remains. Gold lives right here.
• Collect the fines. Add a splash of clean water, tilt gently, and the gold flakes will trail behind the black sand. Suck them straight up with the snuffer bottle and pop them into your vial.

Where beginners go in central Victoria

You're spoilt for choice around the Golden Triangle, the goldfield creeks and gullies between the historic mining towns hold gold that's been washing down for over a century. Rather than chase someone else's secret spot, start on a well-known public goldfield creek and learn to read where gold settles: the inside of bends, behind large rocks, and in the cracks of exposed bedrock.

Two things you must sort before you go. First, in Victoria you need a Miner's Right to fossick or prospect, it's inexpensive, lasts for years, and is legally required. Second, check exactly where you're allowed to be using the official Parks Victoria maps and fossicking information, because plenty of ground is off-limits (private land, water reserves, heritage and reference areas). We won't publish "dig here" coordinates, half the fun is learning to find your own patch, and the rules change from creek to creek.

Tips that actually help

• Classify first, always. Screening out the big stuff before you pan means you're only washing material that could realistically hold gold.
• Go slow. Gold is heavy but the fines are tiny. A rushed swirl tips the good stuff straight over the lip.
• Never tip out the fines. When in doubt, keep the black sand and re-pan it at home in a tub. That last spoonful is where the gold is.
• Time it right. Panning is best after rain, when creeks have moved fresh material, and far more pleasant in the cooler months than baking through a Victorian summer.

Leave it better than you found it

The goldfields are shared heritage, and access depends on all of us doing the right thing. Backfill any holes you dig, take your rubbish home, and don't disturb old mine sites, relics or stonework, they're protected. Leave the creek looking like you were never there and it'll still be worth panning for the next generation.