Searching for Gold at Jupiter Creek

Jupiter Creek is an old gold mining location in the Adelaide Hills open for fossicking.

I have been up there a few times with my (cheap) metal detector, haven't found anything, but had a good time walking around the bush.

The carpark is at the top of a hill, and you walk down a path to the site of most of the diggings, passing old mine shafts along the way, which seem to be mostly fenced off, thankfully.

There is a forest there now, but during the gold diggings in the 1800's the whole area was cleared and there was even a small town setup for the miners.

There were signs of other recently activity from people fossicking for gold. It is one of the only places where people can dig and search for gold in the Adelaide Hills.

Some of the old shafts still had the wooden support beams in place, and the whole place looks pretty surreal.

Some of the shafts are quite significant.

The ground has clearly been massively disturbed previously, but the bush has come back very well.

So even though I didn't hit it rich by finding a big gold nugget, I had a great day at Jupiter Creek. It has a strange atmosphere with so much disturbance in the middle of a natural environment, but looking forward to visiting again.