For most travellers visiting Western Australia, the pristine white sand beaches of the south or the breathtaking gorges of the north top the bucket list.<\/p>\n
But for Frenchman Bruno Vincent, the inland city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, 600 kilometres east of Perth, was top priority.<\/p>\n
Mr Vincent is a gold prospector from the French medieval city of Dole, 370 kilometres south-east of Paris.<\/p>\n
He is travelling in Australia with his daughter Valentine Vincent on a once-in-a-lifetime trip.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Valentine Vincent says the city is important to her father. (ABC Goldfields: Macey Turner)<\/p>\n
Ms Vincent said the visit to WA’s gold city was extremely important to her father.<\/p>\n
“For him [Kalgoorlie] is a really important town, he really wanted to come here,” she said.<\/p>\n
A different kind of prospecting<\/p>\n
Using his daughter as a translator, Mr Vincent explained he started prospecting when he was 20 after meeting a man in a river panning for gold.<\/p>\n
“I asked him, ‘What are you doing?’, and he explained. Then we became friends,” he said.<\/p>\n
The hobby took over Mr Vincent’s life for the next 40 years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A younger Mr Vincent (far left) prospects in a river in France.\u00a0 (Supplied: Bruno Vincent)<\/p>\n
He went on to start a prospecting association and a school holiday camp for children to try their hand at it.<\/p>\n
“[We] really wanted to share this passion,” he said.<\/p>\n
Unlike Australia, French gold prospecting rarely uses a metal detector.<\/p>\n
Instead, Mr Vincent said prospectors study the lay of rivers and used pans to locate gold.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Vincent prospects in the rivers surrounding his home city of Dole in eastern France.\u00a0 (Supplied: Bruno Vincent)<\/p>\n
“Mostly we use the eyes and the knowledge, and mostly we are prospecting with the pan,” he said.<\/p>\n
Also unlike Australia, Mr Vincent said most of the gold found in the French rivers was like “dust”,’ and flowed down the mountains from Switzerland’s Alps.<\/p>\n
“In France, you cannot find a lot of nuggets; it’s just more like powder,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The quantity of gold is massive here, compared to France. The gold in France is too small to be detected by the detector.”<\/p>\n
It is this scarcity that makes it so special to Mr Vincent.<\/p>\n
“Because the gold in France is really rare, and also really hard to find, it’s really precious for us.”Hopes for local connection<\/p>\n
Ms Vincent said she had reached out to the Kalgoorlie community on Facebook, hoping a local could show her father the ins and outs of Australian prospecting.<\/p>\n
She said her father had no interest in finding and keeping Aussie gold and just wanted to learn the techniques used here.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bruno and Valentine Vincent visited the Museum of the Goldfields to learn more about the area’s gold prospecting history.\u00a0 (ABC Goldfields: Macey Turner)<\/p>\n
“We really wanted to share this moment with a local, but we didn’t have the chance to do that.”<\/p>\n
Operations coordinator at Kalgoorlie Tourism Sarah Shepherd said there had been a definite uptick in gold tourists like Mr Vincent in 2025.<\/p>\n
“Since the gold price has gone up, there’s definitely a lot more people,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We get a lot of Europeans wanting to do gold prospecting, and people from Asian countries as well.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sarah Shepherd says many visitors at this time of year are Europeans escaping the cold weather. (ABC Goldfields: Macey Turner)<\/p>\n
Ms Shepherd said it was important that people who wanted to try their hand at prospecting did not go alone.<\/p>\n
“Go out with an experienced prospector and take more water than you think you will need, and also have an EPIRB [emergency beacon] with you.”<\/p>\n
Despite the lack of prospecting, Mr Vincent said he had enjoyed his time in the Goldfields.<\/p>\n
“The gold is a dream for every man, and particularly for me,” he said.<\/p>\n
While Ms Vincent had not quite caught the prospecting bug from her father, she said it meant a lot that she got to spend time with him.<\/p>\n
“He shared his hobby and his passion when we were kids. I have really great memories prospecting in the river with him,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So I’m really happy to share this moment here in this city with him, because I know it’s his dream.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most travellers visiting Western Australia, the pristine white sand beaches of the south or the breathtaking gorges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,196230,134,14014,5284,130530,66236,129204,196229],"class_list":["post-359464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-detecting","tag-entertainment","tag-french","tag-gold","tag-gold-prospecting","tag-kalgoorlie","tag-kalgoorlie-news","tag-prospecting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}