Free Gold Prospecting Maps for WA

"I've got the detector. I've got the Miner's Right. So where do I actually go?"

If that's you, good. You're asking the right question, and most people never ask it. They drive 700 kilometres, get out at the first bit of red dirt that looks "goldy", and swing a coil at it for three days. Then they go home with a bucket of rusty nails and a sore back.

Here's the bit most people don't believe: nearly everything you need to answer that question is free. The WA Government has spent decades mapping this state: every old mine, every rock type, millions of soil samples, millions of drill holes. It's all sitting online and costs nothing to look at.

The catch? It's spread across about a dozen websites that look like they were designed by a committee of geologists. I'm allowed to say that. I was one for 30 years.

So this page fixes that. 12 free maps, stacked into 5 layers, in the order I'd use them if I was starting from scratch tomorrow. For each one you get what it shows, where to click, and the one thing to look for.

The 5-layer free map stack

Every free map on this page answers one of five questions. Ask them in this order and each answer shrinks the area you're looking at, from "the whole Yilgarn" down to "that low rise with the ironstone on it, 400 metres east of the old shafts."

Why this order? Because the most common mistake I see is people starting at layer 5. They open TENGRAPH, find a gap in the tenements, and go detecting there because it's available. Available isn't the same as prospective. Plenty of ground is open precisely because nobody thinks there's anything in it.

Start with the gold, work out the geology, and only then worry about access.

Layer 1: Where gold's already turned up

Gold isn't spread evenly across WA. It clusters. Where the old-timers found it, there's usually more nearby, in the same rocks and along the same structures, just not in the exact spot they dug. So the first job is finding the clusters.

2Historical Mining Tenement Maps: the ground they pegged before computers

FreeNo loginGeoVIEW.WA layer

Before TENGRAPH existed, tenements were drawn by hand on paper plans. DMPE has scanned those and put them in GeoVIEW.WA as a layer. It's one of the most underused free resources in the state.

Why does it matter? Because people only pegged ground they thought was worth something. A cluster of old gold leases and alluvial claims on a 1930s plan tells you where the diggers were busy, and those areas often don't show up as "mines" in MINEDEX at all.

Look for: small, tightly packed old leases and claims with nothing on the modern map. That usually means somebody worked alluvial or shallow gold that never became a proper mine.

And that's the lesson with every historical map: it's a clue, not an address.

Layer 2: Why it's there

This is the layer that separates people who find gold from people who find old workings. Once you know which rocks and which structures the old gold sits on, you can go looking for the same combination somewhere nobody's been.

4GeoVIEW.WA geology: the free map that does most of the work

FreeNo loginWeb map, works on desktop and tablet

GeoVIEW.WA is DMPE's free interactive map, and if you only learn one tool on this page, make it this one. Layers 1, 2 and 3 of the stack all live inside it: geology, MINEDEX, old tenement maps, soil geochemistry, drill holes and the outlines of company exploration reports.

Turn on the geology and the state lights up in colours. The ones you care about for gold are mostly the greenstone belts, the long strips of old volcanic and sedimentary rocks that run through the Yilgarn and Pilbara. Nearly all of WA's gold sits in or near them. Then look for the faults and shear zones, the lines where the rock has been broken and ground up. Those are the plumbing the gold travelled up.

Look for: where a fault or shear bends, splits or crosses another one, inside greenstone. Gold likes the kinks, not the straights. When a bend like that has old workings on one end and nothing on the other, you've got a question worth answering.

If the map colours and codes do your head in (they do for most people at first), this is the video I'd watch first:

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How to read geological maps for gold prospecting in WA (19 min)

Layer 3: What the explorers found

This is my favourite layer, and it's the one almost nobody else writing about free maps even mentions.

Every exploration company that holds ground in WA has to report what it did. So when a company walks away, its work stays behind: soil samples, drill holes, maps, the lot. After the confidentiality period (I believe its 7 years), you and I get to read it for free. That's millions of dollars of exploration work, and most prospectors have never opened it.

8WAMEX: the company reports behind the dots

FreeNo login to search and downloadPDF reports + data

WAMEX is the library of company exploration reports. Found an interesting anomaly in GeoVIEW? Click the report outline over it, grab the report number, and download the whole thing. Maps, sample results, drill logs, and the geologist's own conclusions.

The part I always read first is the recommendations at the end. That's where the company geologist writes "further work is warranted on X" and then, often, nobody ever did it.

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Finding company exploration reports in GeoVIEW (5 min)

Layer 4: What it looks like on the ground

You've got a target on a screen. Now you need to know what it looks like standing on it, and how you're going to get there without ripping a sidewall out.

9Aerial imagery: Google Earth Pro and Landgate Locate

FreeGoogle Earth Pro is a desktop appLocate is web-based

Google Earth Pro (the free desktop version) has one feature every prospector should know: the historical imagery slider, the little clock icon. Step back through the years and you'll often see old scrapes, dryblowing heaps, tracks and shafts that have since been bulldozed or grown over.

Landgate's Locate is free for personal, non-commercial use and lets you overlay Landgate's aerial photography, roads and historical maps.

Look for: patches of disturbed ground (pale scrapes, lines of small heaps, spoil around shafts) and changes in soil colour and vegetation. A line of trees sitting on a subtle rise often marks a harder rock unit, like a quartz vein or a contact.

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Find lost and forgotten gold mines using aerial imagery (11 min)

Layer 5: Are you allowed to be there?

Here's where it gets serious. Everything above tells you where you'd like to go. This layer tells you whether you can. Get this wrong and you're not just wasting a weekend. You can lose your gear and your finds, and cop a very significant fine, possibly even jail time

11TENGRAPH Web: who holds the ground today

FreeWeb mapCheck on the day

TENGRAPH Web is DMPE's tenure map. It shows every live and pending mining tenement: exploration licences, prospecting licences, mining leases, the lot. DMPE's own TENGRAPH Web page was last updated in June 2026. Click a tenement and you get the holder, the type and the status.

If you want to see what's been freshly applied for or surrendered, DMPE's Mining Notices page lists new applications and surrenders, also free.

The rules of thumb (in plain English, and check the details with DMPE):
• Open Crown land, no tenement: you can prospect with a Miner's Right, subject to the restrictions below.
• Exploration licence: you need a Section 40E permit or written permission from the holder.
• Prospecting licence or mining lease: you need the holder's written permission.
• Pending tenement (ground someone's applied for but doesn't hold yet):
• National parks, nature reserves and other reserves: generally off limits.

Even on open Crown land, a Miner's Right doesn't let you go everywhere. DMPE's Miner's Right guidance says you need the occupier's consent to prospect within 100 metres of crops, yards, gardens, buildings and cemeteries, and on pastoral leases within 400 metres of water works, dams and bores.

All 12 free maps compared

Bookmark this table. It's the whole page on one screen.

The 45-minute desk workflow: putting it all together

Here's how the stack works on a real evening at the kitchen table. Pick one goldfield you can actually get to, not the whole state, and run through this.

1. Find the gold (10 minutes). Open GeoVIEW.WA. Turn on MINEDEX mines and the historical tenement maps. Zoom into your goldfield and note where the small gold workings cluster. Drop a pin on each cluster.
2. Find the reason (10 minutes). Turn on the geology. What rock are those workings sitting on? Is there a fault or shear running through them? Now follow that same rock and that same structure away from the workings, especially round the bends. Mark two or three spots with no workings at all.
3. Find the leftovers (10 minutes). Turn on surface geochemistry and drillholes. Do any of your marked spots have a soil anomaly? Any drill holes on it? An anomaly with no drilling goes to the top of the list. Click the report outline and download the WAMEX report for later.
4. Look at the ground (10 minutes). Open your top two spots in Google Earth Pro. Wind the historical imagery back. Look for old scrapes, heaps, tracks in, and the vegetation line. Download the AUSTopo sheet for the area.
5. Check access (5 minutes, and again on the day). TENGRAPH Web for tenure, ACHIS for heritage. If it's under an exploration licence, sort a 40E permit or holder permission. If it's a mining lease, you need the holder's written permission, or you move on.

Done properly, you walk out of that evening with two or three targets you understand. You know why they might hold gold, and you're not just standing where someone else once stood.

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Simple guide to finding gold prospecting locations in WA (14 min)

WA's goldfields at a glance

WA was carved up into goldfields during the rushes of the 1890s, and those names are still stamped all over the maps: on old plans, in WAMEX reports, and in TENGRAPH's mineral field boundaries. If you know which goldfield you're in, every free map above gets easier to search.

For the Murchison centres in more depth (Cue, Day Dawn, Mount Magnet and Yalgoo), there's a stack of free material in the GSWA explanatory notes for those map sheets. See map #5.

5 mistakes people make with free prospecting maps

1. Starting with tenure instead of gold

Covered this up top, but it's the big one. A gap in TENGRAPH isn't a target. It's just a gap. Find the geology first.

2. Detecting the old workings instead of learning from them

The ground right around a shaft has usually been flogged to death by every detector since the first Minelab. The old workings are the answer to "which rocks carry gold here?" Go and find those rocks somewhere quieter.

3. Trusting old production figures

Historical production numbers can be rubbery, to put it politely. Some were talked up to sell shares. Others were never recorded because the gold went straight into someone's pocket. Use them as "there was gold here", not "there was exactly this much." I did a quick video on this: Don't trust the old-timers' gold mine values.

4. Reading ppb as grams

Soil results in parts per billion look big. They're not. 1,000 ppb is 1 gram per tonne. What matters in soil geochem is the pattern, a cluster of values well above the local background, not any single number.

5. Using a screenshot from last month

Tenure changes constantly. Ground that was open when you planned the trip can be pegged by the time you arrive. Check TENGRAPH again the morning you head out, or the night before from the last town with reception.

Free vs paid: an honest take

Full disclosure: I run GoldProspectingWA, which is a paid tool. So take this with the appropriate grain of salt, but here's my honest view.

The free maps above hold most of the raw data. If you've got more time than money and you enjoy the research, you can absolutely do this for nothing. Plenty of people do. Nobody should tell you otherwise.

What paid tools sell you isn't secret data. It's time. The free layers live in different places, run at different speeds and don't talk to each other. You're switching between GeoVIEW, TENGRAPH and WAMEX, and doing the stacking in your head. A paid tool puts the layers on one map, keeps the tenure current and, in some cases, works out in the field. On our side, GoldProspectingWA carries tenements updated daily, plus soil samples and drilling locations on the same map.

So here's the question I'd ask yourself. If you get out bush three or four times a year and each trip costs you a few hundred bucks in fuel and food, how many research hours is it worth saving to make sure every trip is on the best ground you can find? For some people that's zero. For others it's a no-brainer. Only pay if it makes sense for you.

What's changed in 2025–26 (and why a lot of guides are out of date)

• New department name. The Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration (DMPE) was formed on 1 July 2025. If a guide tells you to go to "DMIRS" or "DEMIRS", it's out of date, and some old links now redirect or break.
• The core tools are still running. GeoVIEW.WA, TENGRAPH Web, MINEDEX, WAMEX, the eBookshop and DASC are all on DMPE's current online systems list, and all are listed as free.
• Free national topo maps are complete. Geoscience Australia finished its AUSTopo 1:250,000 national series in 2026, free to download.
• Mineral Titles Online needs a login; TENGRAPH Web and Mining Notices don't. For checking tenure as a prospector, TENGRAPH is the one you want.

I re-check every link and status on this page regularly. Spot something that's changed? Let me know through the contact page and I'll fix it.

Pre-trip free map checklist

Screenshot this, or print it and stick it in the glovebox.

• Two or three targets marked, each with a reason (rock + structure + chemistry)
• WAMEX report for the area downloaded and the recommendations read
• GSWA explanatory notes for the map sheet downloaded
• AUSTopo 1:250k sheet saved to phone and printed
• Google Earth imagery of targets saved offline or screenshotted
• TENGRAPH checked for tenure, and checked again the day before
• ACHIS checked for heritage places
• Miner's Right current, plus 40E permit or written holder permission if needed
• Someone at home knows exactly where you're going and when you'll be back

Frequently asked questions