More Trouble in S.E Queensland

This was posted by a member of the Queensland prospecting club

I received a request to post this Letter from John Parson of the now closed to the public "Prophet Mine", Thanks to all you morons, members or not who have continued to trespass in the West Coast Creek and surrounding areas in particular.
Abuse your freedom and you will lose it!You can't just dig where you like!
I must say I did warn you.

Prophet Gold Mine P/F 07 5484 1226
504 Rossmore Rd E [email protected]
Kilkivan Qld

5th September 2014
To all Tourist Promoters and Tourist Associations.
It seems that our providing a panning service for the general public has led to the belief that the local creeks are accessible for this purpose also. There is either no gold or no access in the local creeks, and there is no creek that is not owned by private owners (who refuse to give access). These owners are rightly annoyed at the invasion of their private property rights and having to continually discourage people who contact them.
The worst offenders are the detector operators, also some who use dredges and high bankers (both of which are illegal), who think they can venture onto private property. The region has never provided detector operators with any possibitiy. I sympathise with these property owners concerns and respect their property rights.
This, along with a couple of other reasons have made us reconsider where we're going with our business.
We have decided to stop the day tripper side of things,ie - the panning and Saturday and Sunday Gold Pour Demo'. We will still be doing the School Tours and Gold Pour Demo' Tours for groups by appointment only and are subject to numbers and date availability.
The Saturday & Sunday Gold Pour Demos will cease immediately and the panning will finish by the 1st December 2014.
To do this, we need to remove all brochures advertising the panning and gold pour demo's for day trippers. We are more intent on promoting our stone sales than tourism.
I am requesting your help to implement this ASAP by either returning or destroying any brochures for the Prophet Gold Mine that you may have.

We greatly appreciate all the assistance you have given us over the past years and wish you all the best with your tourism promotions.

Kind regards,

John & Ruth Parsons.
We have very little area to prospect in now, the way things are going it's going to get worse!!
Mick

that's no good my my 9 year old girl loved it there

interesting that this letter says -:

We have decided to stop the day tripper side of things,ie - the panning and Saturday and Sunday Gold Pour Demo ..... The Saturday & Sunday Gold Pour Demos will cease immediately and the panning will finish by the 1st December 2014

Click to expand...

and they have not updated their own website

on a side note I thought highbankers were legal in every state, has there been a recent change to make them illegal in Queensland or am I just wrong ?

Outboard
Not legal in QLD.
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5460
cheers
Lee

I just don't get it. Sure they make a point about people illegally prospecting and this is probably the case for a few, but I do not know the area and how big the issue is. And I note that the landowners are upset because fossickers are asking them for permission to fossick.

Are the Parsons saying that because the nearby landowners are upset about illegal prospecting that they are effectively closing their business so as not to attract fossickers to the area and upset the regional farmers?

Or are they saying that their business is failing or they don't want to run it as much anymore and the illegal fossicking is a good excuse to throw in when making the announcement of the wind-down of their business to the local tourism groups?

The Prophet gold mine is actually a landscape business, they sell washed gravel for landscaping. Gold is a by product. The wash they get comes from the mullock heaps at the italian gully goldfield (I think) were the biggest nugget found was 75oz. It is this wash that tourist are allowed to pan. The wash does contain good gold. To me it seems like the tourist come thick and fast and this tends to overwhelm them so to thin them out they mix a heap of plain gravel/dirt with the wash and bingo little to no gold so the tourist stop coming. They seem to have had a lot of issues with workplace health and safety, upgrading the tourist side of things was going to cost them heaps. The tourist may have had to wear safety gear (hard hats, overalls steelcap boots ect). The panning area would have had to been put under shade. I don't know if this is part of the reason behind the closure of the tourist side of things.
I haven't had much to do with the local property owners, if they don't want people on their properties why don't they put up signage stating they don't want people on there place. The owner of the property where I was panning didn't really mind, it was his next door neighbour that was kicking up the stink. With the neighbour whinging, the property owner banned everyone to keep the peace.
The old copper smelter (a tourist attraction) is up on the end of the same road (Rossmore rd) as the prophet mine. The locals on this road hate everyone, tourist, prospectors, everyone.
The Kilkivan bush park is in the middle of all this and they seem to get the rough end of the pineapple, their business pays the price.
The government could go a long way to fixing this if they just open up another fossicking area in the south east area. There is a huge area from Brisbane to Gympie out to Mt perry.
Yes we have the 7 mile diggings but the area is small and shrinking (I think they are trying to close it altogether), the gold is fine and nuggets are rare as hens teeth. For me. it's an 8 hr drive to the nearest nugget producing area.
Mick