imo its a good time to start looking at aud gold stocks... most of them are much cheaper than 6 months ago and the overall technical shape suggests gold/silver is about to commence a key upwave
as other poster mentioned - there's everything from a big producer like say EVN - multilbillion dollar stock which pays high dividends and has 8 mines so fairly reliable as gold miners go - down to $10M mkt cap spec explorers drilling in hopes of making big discoveries
if you;re looking at gold its also worth considering silver stocks - as silver is acting as a precious metal in the current cycle - and is a much rarer mineral to find in mineable size/value in Australia
from my own learning curve I would suggest the following - only invest what you can afford to lose 50% of - it takes many years to really understand mining stock risks well and until you do its often a tough game - try to identify knowledgable posters on HC and follow the stocks they look at.
there are a large number of experienced geologists in particular who follow given stocks - though there are a lot fewer who understand full mine/company math - mainly because HC is dominated by small cap investors.
So its a better place to learn about drillers than stocks like say EVN or even stocks like SLR/GOR etc as a very general rule.