Bedigo Gold Expo

Hi all.

I was at the Gold Expo yesterday very early Saturday morning. I took along someone who has been searching for his first bit of gold for a few months now.

We were both a little disappointed. If this is the first one ever held then there is a lot of room for improvement but congratulations are in order for getting it going in the first place. The displays and merchandise were fine but for such a large shed there was a lot of space between merchants. Maybe we were there too early as there weren't many people in at that time.

The highlight of the time I was there was seeing that beautiful 2 kg+ nugget in the news recently. For $12.00 per adult it was worth going to see. I was going to post this last night but waited until now in case I put off people going to it because of my thoughts.

I hope others enjoyed their day at the Expo and it was all just us.

Regards Axtyr.

It was the first Expo, so there will be a lot of teething problems. I was talking to Brad Williams (the organiser) and he was telling me that he contacted a lot more organisations to come and join the Expo. A lot more than was there over the weekend. But I think those that were asked and did not participate thought they'll wait and see how it go's before committing them selves for the future. (Remember the Laanecoorie Gold Bash only started with 35 people attending and only one sponsor back in 2011. Now look at it, 500 to 600 people turning up from all over Australia, and over 50 sponsors.)  
At the Expo nearly very stall holder told me that by Saturday night they had run out of stock and had to get more for Sunday. And all the participants of the show said they had a great results and would come back next year.
But I do agree there was a lot of space between exhibitors. But this gave the freedom for people to walk around without tripping over each other. One big mistake that we made on Saturday (and we rectified it for Sunday) was that the Seminar Room was to small to carry all the people who wanted to listen to Andrew Bales lecture on how to find Big Gold. We moved him to one area of the hall that would accommodate a lot more people.
Will there be another one next year ?? Yes possibly. It depends on Brad Williams health as he is 76 years old. But I know of others that indicated that they may take it over if he can't.
wombat