Hi All,

I've been surfing the net all day and reading some other forums (international ones) about detecting for gold from 'lost treasure' sites and got to thinking (and doing more surfing) about the various shipwrecks that have occurred on Australian beaches over the last couple of centeries. Many of them were reported to be carrying gold in various forms - and the majority of the gold has never been recovered.

My question is, has anyone on the forum tried detecting in any of the locations that these shipswrecks occurred???

Cheers
Grumpy

I read 2 stories today about ships that got me thinking down this path...

The first is about the the German Passanger ship the Seydlitz in 1914 that was the last German ship that sailed from Sydney harbour before they where stopped because of WW1. It made it's way up the north coast, and the Australian destroyer Parramatta was sent out after it to bring it back to port. The Seydlitz apparently had a cargo of 3,000 gold sovereigns and jewels (reportedly diamonds) and important documents from wealth Germans living in Sydney. The captain of the Seydlitz was aware of being followed so they off-loaded a copper sea chest with the gold, jewels and documents and stashed it somewhere behind the beach around the Ballina / Tweed Heads / Byron Bay area. This cache of gold and gems has never been located. So, no real shipwreck with this one - but I don't know what the historical / archaeological rules would be for a find like this - if someone did manage to find it.

The second was the story about the Chang Chow in 1884 that left Newcastle bound for Hong Kong with around 120 Chinese diggers aboard returning to their homeland with their gold and gold sovereigns that struck a reef just off Frazer Island. It was reported at the time that some of the Chinese were carrying up to 800 sovereigns each, possible more, and that one of the men who fell into the sea had 30 pounds of gold strapped to his chest and disappeared. "tides and currents may have swept their treasure-laden bodies to any number of locations on Fraser Island. To date, the treasure has not yet been recovered". So again, not actually searching in the shipwreck, more looking for where items from the ship may have washed ashore....

So, I guess I'm more thinking of beachcombing in the general areas of these shipwrecks for things that may have washed ashore rather then actually hunting / detecting in the sites themselves - assuming you could pin-point the site and it wasn't underwater

By the way take no notice of what Nero design says on  this topic on that other forum!
Have a look a where he got his  Warner brothers pictures from:
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809793124/trailer
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doug