Hi I'm new and have some questions.

Hi,
We are (my husband and I) new in the prospecting world. We have been inviting to join a prospecting weekend once and we though it was terrific. Not only the excitement of the gold searching but also the camping and meeting new people.

Now we are going to travel around Australia and thought why not take a detector with us and do some detecting on our way.
So now we have some questions some of you might give an answer to.
What is a good, but not too expensive detector? We heard something about a Terra-X705 would be good, has anyone experience with this one? Or maybe a second hand one because we have little budget. Where can we find a reliable (second hand) shop or site?
Can we go prospecting without joining a club? When we f.i. are in Queensland and want to go prospecting, can we then join a group because its (we think) not wise to go on your own?

Who can give me some answers/ideas?

Hi brigand and welcome to the forum.
You can go prospecting anytime without belonging to a club. Most places permit prospecting, but National parks are off limits.
There are 2 main types of detectors, VLF and PI. In a broad sense, VLF detectors are mainly used for coin and relic prospecting, especially in trashy areas because of their good descrimination abilities, but are limited in their gold prospecting uses as their limit in depth and of handling mineralised ground. PI detectors have a much deeper ability and are able to handle mineralised ground a lot better, but don't have very good descrimination so are better suited for gold prospecting. Depending on what type of prospecting you would like to get into, somewhat determines the detector you should look at. As far as VLF machines, price range of $100 to $2800 and PI machines from about $800 up to $6700. The Terra-X705 is a good VLF machine.
Hope that helps a little to start the ball rolling for you.
Cheers