Usually aim for relics and coins, don't find pre-decs as often or as old as our southern counterparts, oldest coin for me so far is a 1910 shilling and 1912 three pence.
I don't find jewellery very often but I'm getting better at finding old sites that people used to be on and old parks and I don't usually detect the main busy beaches up here, too many people and chance of kids coming up and hanging around ya bugging ya (is ok here and there but not on a regular basis, so I go at night time to avoid that).
Check out
www.kimbucktwo.com for a while first before deciding if you want to try metal detecting out, it's free to join and easy to search for info on.
If you're near a big popular beach like the gold coast etc you'll have a good chance of getting jewellery and coins often, if not you could find some good old sites around for relics and pre-decimal coins.
Unfortunately some of the best sites are ones with heaps of rubbish and bottles to get out of the way first as where people have been alot in the past will have plenty of rubbish hiding good finds, less rubbish the older the site is, they littered less in the 1800's-early 1900's than in the mid 1900's-current and they didn't use alumininium much back in that 1st period.
Aluminium is the worst, it often gives off a good signal similar to proper finds and the signal can vary if it's a folded up bit, rounded bit etc, you get sick of finding pullrings but you got to dig them to have a chance at gold jewellery/gold as gold shows up accross a broad range including the aluminium right down to 5c pieces range (just above foil and iron, so can atleast discriminate out most iron, foil and some steel without knocking out small gold).
You'd be surprised where some of the bottle and tube (toothpaste etc) dump sites are, some are just in the back dunes at the beach or within 100 metres of the beach, there wasn't exactly much concern for the sea and reef sea wildlife back in the day.
Usually look for intact bottles out past some mangroves at a beach (was a dumping site nearby back in the day, so they regularly was up).
I also have a site I cleaned out a heap of vintage ones from that the grass grew back on and have been waiting a few years for the council to get around to burning so as I can have a good detect of it, only got to do a tiny bit of detecting there.
Bottles from that site are 1/3 softdrink, 1/3 medicine, 1/3 alcohol ones from the 20s-70's, alot of ones that were made locally too like Say Tristam Please, big scheppes ones, liniment ones etc.
I think it was the dump site for the nearby military base/hospital back in WW2, also had vagrant caravaners living on it for a number of years too.
Metal finds so far from that site are some pre-decs, a early 50's holden hubcap (still had general motors in the name), Paul duval lipstick tube from the 50's, marcassite brooch missing most of it's stones, a rusty gherka blade, bullets and a few other things that I can't remember.
I have high hopes for some nice vintage finds and a heap of pre-decs from that site once I clean out a heap of the aluminium bottle caps from milk bottles etc once the site is burnt finally (is how I came across it, some pyro/careless smoker burnt it, I fossicked it and found tonnes of intact vintage bottles, went over it a bunch of times dragging and digging with my 1 ft mattock and found plenty more before and a few time after the grass grew back, have found several other main dumping spots near it).
I also detect Castle Hill, a local small mountain as that has had people regularly on it since the early 1900's or late 1800's with alot of military presence over the years, oldest find from there is a nice brass english military button from around 1885 and a surveyors equipment name tag from the 1930's, some nice mineral specimens too and that shilling and a penny among other things.
Really want to go up to Tinaroo dam and join a detectorist up there for a bunch of hunts, alot of military related finds like rising sun hat badges, shoulder pips etc including plenty of live rounds, some he needs to call in the military for to blow up or disarm like mortor shells.
I also want to get into gold detecting, I love the relics and old bottles alot of the gold detectorists have no interest in and usually end up chucking, so even if I luck out with the gold I'll still find stuff that interests me and I like doing macro shots of wildlife, so is a win win win scenario for me.
) They are usually from my pets as milestones. I also keep locks of hair from my loved ones and wear them in my locket next to my heart. Maybe I am creepy lol
