Profile

Hi name is Len, he is a gold-digger

2001-ish... It was a mild Ballarat day when gold prospector Len Goldsmith was explored a fresh patch with an old mate. 

The old mate, "blind as a bat", walked two feet ahead, gently swaying a metal detector just a few centimetres above the ground. Len, "deaf as a post", dug the into the areas pointed out by his mate. 

The system proved fruitful for Len and his old mate – they picked up a three ounce and a four ounce gold nugget in just one day. 

“That was me and Barry most likely,” says the 87-year-old local prospecting legend after a four-second pause to ponder. “Ah, them days are gone for me.” 

Len has “worked on gold” nearly all his life. He began his goldmining career at the very young age of 16 (or maybe 17) during the 1930s depression era, dredging and sluicing for gold on Uncle George Goldsmith’s lease not too far from the White Swan Reservoir near Creswick. 

In the local gold prospecting community he is regarded as one of the lucky ones amongst dozens who claim to be otherwise. 

“I used to go out chasing gold with Len,” says fellow gold prospector Ross Tonkin. “He came out one Sunday with me and found a nice one in an hour or two – a 28-ouncer. He has always been half deaf, but he could still hear the gold!” 

“I get the big ones because that’s all I can hear,” Len says in hearty response to the re-telling of the 28-ouncer story, before walking away to retrieve a former medicine pill jar, containing an assortment of gold pieces. 

Len Goldsmith has found a great deal of gold over a good part of the last century, some of which he sold, some was given away, and a fair amount went towards “28 gold necklaces” for various fortunate female children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

Some of his hard-won prospecting gold has now been turned into Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medals, which he thinks is “pretty alright”.  

He was the lucky recipient of a gold medal himself in September 2005. “Have a look back there, in the box behind you,” he says gesturing towards where he knows to be the top of the kitchen shelves. “There’s my military medal, for the 60th anniversary of WW2.”

“I joined the army when I was 18 (in 1939) – the 8th Battalion. I got kicked out when I was 24 because of my ears. I got a severe infection in my ears while in Darwin (training).” Back in Ballarat, Len “went lumping wheat” and worked for “Selkirks the brick people” before spending 28 years with Ford. 

Does he still have gold fever? “I guess that must be what it is,” he says with a throaty laugh. “It’s been two years now. I’d love to still be able to do it, but I can’t.”

Back