New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

While perusing the gold claims map I was surprised to see a claim near Christchurch...

http://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap?v=2&ll=-43.877744,172.285275&z=11&ft-id=649908&ft-q=SELECT%20geometry%20FROM%20649908

Curious if it's payable for them!?

I seem to remember reading gold was found just a little to the north at Birdlings Flat, but it wasn't really worth the effort.

Beach gold south of the Rakaia was traced to the gold reefs at the head of the Wilberforce river, these reefs belong to the reef system of the Taipo river. The sea beaches between the Rangitata and Rakaia rivers small patches of red garnet sands are found which contain gold. Sourced from prospecting for gold by W.F Heinz.

and thats the beach on a clam day at low tide. high tide with a howling southerly and the sea can can go right to the top.

http://paperspast.natlib...e=-------10--1----0-all-

This is very interesting info on the Rakaia river mouth gold field

Edited by user Thursday, 26 April 2012 4:39:21 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Gavin
I have a bach down the south side rakaia river mouth , years ago they mined the beach just south of the bachs ,
there was a creek called gold creek which used to produce some good gold , there still is gold there but you would need some heavy artillary
now to get it out because it has gone quite deep into the beach. i sometimes go for ride down the beach after a big southerly to see if i can find the
red garnet sand but have had no luck so far. As for the north side of the river on the claim you are talking about i havent heard or seen any mining action there for quite some time.

It's pretty weird that there's Garnet sands coming out of the Rakaia as none of its tributaries flow out of any high grade rocks (I'm not disputing it, just pointing out its strange). You may know that there was some fairly serious prospecting up the Wilberforce in the late 1800's but all those reefs are in slightly metamorphosed Greywacke (so no garnet). Of course the fact that the gold occurs with the garnet doesn't mean they are from the same source but it would be interesting to know where the garnet comes from. I actually had a pan in the Wilberforce when fishing there once and got one bit of colour. Not bad i thought considering the distance downstream of the gold bearing rock and the huge size of the braids. I decided then to go have a look for some of the old drives further up but haven't got around to doing it yet, maybe this summer.

Not sure but I know now why you are asking :)
I am up in the Nelson region for work and i had to go up the Cobb Valley so on the way back got the pan out the boot and had a quick go. I had to shoot off after 5 minutes as its full of mosquitoes. Got eaten to buggery. A few good spots there with some quartz about and its about 500m from where Oceana is doing some test drilling. When I was up at Oceana the other week they reckon they can get 200,000oz a year from there. Think I will go back at some stage with some repellent and sluice box :)

Yeah that's the problem with the beach deposits, without geochemistry its hard to determine where the minerals come from originally. The garnet xenocrysts sound cool, just curious how you determined they where xenocrysts?

Fair enough I'd suspect the same, though garnet phenocrysts are often found in granites so i assume its possible they could be found in a rhyolite.

No worries, i didn't know either. Come to think of it i might actually have a garnet in a rhyolite from the gorge, I'm looking at it now and its definitely rhyolite but the one little phenocryst that looks like garnet is hard to tell, it most likley is though, and im fairly sure i found in the rakaia.