Gold panning – a traditional form of individualistic mining that extracts gold from placer deposits using a pan – is an activity largely associated with the bygone era of the famous Californian, Australian, Canadian and South African gold rushes of the nineteenth century. It conjures up images of bedraggled adventurers and fortune seekers who, encouraged by even the shadiest of gold rumours, rushed by boat and by foot to the four corners of the globe, with just a few meagre possessions, the clothes on their back and a trusty prospecting pan, to fossick for gold at the site of the latest rush.
It was an activity that did not require much skill but necessitated an inordinate amount of patience and strength in order to endure the back-breaking work from dawn to dusk, six days a week. After having filled a metal prospecting pan with mud, the gold digger would squat beside the stream, immerse the pan in water, and skillfully see-saw and swill the contents backwards and forwards. The earth would be washed away, the rocks picked out and finally only the heavy gold would be left in the pan as a yellow tail along the bottom, payable if in quantity, but tantalisingly just a “colour” if sparse.
When one takes into account the significant number of gold rushes that occurred around the world in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is possible that hundreds of thousands of men and women, if not more, were at one time engaged in gold panning.
But the professional gold digger is largely a character of the past, as there are now very few gold prospecting areas open to individual diggers.
However, the tradition of gold panning is being kept alive as an amateur sport, which seems to be growing in popularity on a yearly basis.
Gold panning as a sporting contest has its roots, bizarrely enough, in northern Lapland, which remains the only active gold prospecting area in Europe.
The first occasion where modern gold panning competition rules were applied was at a national contest held at the historical gold mining village of Tankavaara, adjacent to the Hopiaoja Creek, in the Finnish province of Sodankylä, in 1974.
Gold panning as a sport requires that each competitor receives a pan and a bucket of sand in which a number of gold nuggets, known only to the Chief Judge, are hidden. The winner must retrieve all the nuggets in the shortest time using the traditional gold panning technique. At such competitions, provision is made for both proficient and novice participants, who are divided into categories according to gender and age, as well as individual and team events.
During the first few years that the competition was held, it proved to be quite a modest affair, with only a few dozen contestants participating in the event. Most of the initial participants included travellers interested in gold and panning and professional gold miners who worked the famous Lemmenjoki river, in northern Lapland.
However, within three years, the event had generated considerable international interest to the extent that, in 1977, the first World Gold Panning Championships were held in Tankavaara and the World Gold Panning Association (WGA) was founded.
Since the late 1970s, the World Gold Panning Championships have grown considerably in popularity and the event is now hosted in a different member country every year at a competition site famous for its gold history. (Member countries include Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US.)
The most recent event, the 2012 World Gold Panning Championships, was held at the historic mining village and popular tourist attraction of Pilgrim’s Rest, in Mpumulanga, during the first week of October.
The event proved an overwhelming success, not only because it showcased South Africa’s ability to host out- standing international sporting competitions, but because the local team claimed first position in the overall tally of medals. South African participants won a total of 16 medals – including five gold, six silver, and five bronze – outperforming their biggest and most experienced rivals from north of the Arctic Circle. Finland came second, with 12 medals, and Sweden claimed third position with four medals.
South Africa, which joined the WGA in 1997, has been competing in international gold panning com- petitions for the last 15 years. In addition to participating in international events, the South African Gold Panning Association (SAGPA), in association with the Pilgrim’s Rest Museum and Mpumulanga’s Department of Culture, Sport and Recreation, hosts a national gold panning event once a year on the banks of the Blyde river, adjacent to the village of Pilgrim’s Rest.
At present, interest in the sport is largely confined to residents of the historic gold mining villages situated in Mpumlanga, namely Pilgrim’s Rest, MacMac and Barberton. However, some attempt is now being made to broaden interest to other provinces.
The next World Gold Panning Championships are set to be hosted in Biella, Italy, in August 2013.