Old Mining Town Pine Creek Australia Holds Annual Gold Panning Contest.
Past Winner Includes a Five Year Old Girl!
Will Gold Pan Out?
That was the question for contestants in Pine Creek Australia’s annual gold panning contest held this week. Pine Creek is an old mining town in Northern Australia that was established in 1870. Gold was discovered the following year when workers digging hole for telephone lines discovered traces of gold. This led to a gold rush that turned Pine Creek into a busy mining town in the following decades. About 4,000 Chinese workers came to operate the gold mines in Pine Creek. During a ten year period over 750,000 ounces of gold were mined at Pine Creek.
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While gold is no longer actively mined in Pine Creek, contestants compete annually in Pine Creek’s Gold Rush Festival for the five hundred dollar prize and the change to strike gold. This year’s winner was Lauren Kaiserman, a native of nearby Katerine, Australia.
You can read a local account of the Pine Creek gold panning contest here.
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