New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

thanks gavin. how frequently does the data get refreshed? i never actually thought about it. i used to check the govt site all the time but it was a nightmare to use back in the day. didn't even work on my mac computer.

i have been referring to your gold permit map quite a bit lately as i have been researching new ground and doing quite a bit of exploring.

it has got to the point all the handy key rivers here are claimed. if not under a mining license its under an exploratory one.

i have talked to some newbies on the new shotover claim. seem like nice guys, abeit facing a huge challenge.

i was very surprised that they got this claim as i was led to believe the river had a 50 year moratorium on mining. local rumour perhaps.

anyway these 3 guys have arthurs point (bridge) to deep creek. a tough stretch nearly all in gorge with f all access unless rafting down river.

i was amazed the crown issued them with this as they don't have the gear or knowledge to mine it. remembering the last attempt was by L&M Mining in the 80's with a dredge. they blew up several rapids, and also apparently got 50kg in 24 hours at the junction of the moonlight. from other stories i have heard from good sources i would actually tend to believe this nearly. it would have been a great spot anyway. it used to be known as the jewellers shop in the rush as it was loaded with nuggets. L&M blew up some rapids to get the gold which is what pissed off the locals and the rafting companies that raft them.

i love sluiceboxing and river ground sluicing but i reckon detecting is the way to go now. got to get out of the rivers as there is gold elsewhere too as many know. also easier to 'disappear'. after a while all you newbies will find it is at your own discretion who you tell of your hobby and exploits. gold seems to make people crazy in a way. living in a small town it is amazing how everyone knows your business, and who will go to great lengths trying to follow you to your "gold mine".

PROSPECTORS: before i began writing all this i was meaning to say, check all areas of the permit map before heading out if you are in doubt. there can be overlaps between permits. eg. on the kawarau river there is a submission for a mining permit. under the exploration section the same stretch is also covered under an exploration permit. this happens, and i guess can lead to a bit of a race to get fully permitted. i understand similar happened when glass earth blanket permitted most of central otago. i believe small scale mining got small areas off this off glass earth, sometimes as a partnership or otherwise i guess buying a small are off GE.

hope some of this helps someone.

@simon - I try and update the permit data once a month, but it can often be 2 months between updates. Only a small number ever seem to change. I want to try and automate the process so it gets a more regular update but need to explore this a bit as I don't think Crown Minerals is geared up for this properly. Regarding seeing overlaps from different types of permit, you can simply select the blank entry in the "type" drop down and refresh - you'll see everything then ;)

Sounds like there's some interesting stories there regarding people going to any lengths to discover your "gold mine" - sounds quite amusing! I think in general they'd be pretty disappointed (well, in my case anyway).

I suspect a lot of the new claims are investment claims that people are sitting on hoping to make money? Shame if so. In the Northern Territories of Oz apparently they have a good idea - claims get decreased by 50% each year so giving people incentive to actually work their claims and also stops this hoarding. Assuming I understood what someone told me on my WA trip correctly.

The Shotover claim - yes, very surprising! Maybe the person issuing claims didn't have their coffee that morning!? But I think getting the claim is only half the battle - you then have to get access? (might be an issue or not)

Hopefully I'll get down your way soon and hook up if you're keen. Think I've got a better detecting technique after all my Aussie practise ;)

@oroplata - I'll see what I can do. Will take a good look when I get a bit of spare time. Might be legalities of overlaying the data though if it's copyrighted in anyway. Worth a look though! Cheers :)

There some funky examples out there alrite some much worse than the 1 above i guess it all depends on who did the paperwork...

Which do you think would be the letter of the law...
1) Permit to Mine the river bed or
2) Permit to mine only within the red shaded/hi-lighted area?

I would say 3) your playing with fire! for a start who ever has a claim has every type of permissions to be there even if a corner has been missed on the CM MAP you standing on a outside bend looking at some invisible line with your pan n shovle would not:)

i've been using wams online for a bit and have noticed differences in the surveying in the overlays also.

there are many reasons and just as many examples. i think the data has come from a few different sources also.

in the old days they didn't often look at where a road should go. instead it was like someone in the capital was drawing lines on maps for countryside sight unseen.

as someone mentioned above it could be due to sloppy surveying for the permit

in the queenstown area there are some sound examples over the mountain tops. actually many of these were used by the early miners to get into the interior. others have just been planned and are just paper roads.

often what is stated as public may appear as not. for example a farmer may place signs that states its private although there is a legal right of way for the public. in wams all this is shown colour coded in the maps.

it pays to clarify things first though before barging onto someones land as in reality the right of way is just a paper road perhaps. often it may have had buildings constructed over it etc. and errors do occur, ie. farmer buys paper road off crown and the paperwork adjustment doesn't flow through the system.

wams is a great tool. good to research before approaching landowners. just be cautious and don't go in with all guns firing as often i think it would be the case the landowner knows what the deal is with his own land. just sometimes they may be leading you astray. if in doubt i would get another opinion. neighbours, other govt agencies may be able to help, ie local council planning dept.

gbr:

i would think you would have to abide by the boundaries as outlined in your permit.

this does again highlight the problem of why their is a difference. above i was talking about the same with wams another mapping application which has the same issue.

i think the trouble is with the layers of data not matching up somehow. a bit like on google maps when you can see the stitching between images.

i can see the problem though. it sort of makes the permit map useless as a tool in a way as its not really accurate.

i would be cautious in trying to squat on a corner of what may be permitted land. i'm sure the law would not be on your side. best bet would be to look into who the claim owner is. i'm sure they would be able to verify the matter.

all these new online tools are great for research but most will have fine print somewhere stating the sites are not liable for errors, and like most things, they do occur.

gbr:

i think you might have it there. you think they would be pretty strict on what is used to show the boundaries of areas when permits are lodged. i know with google maps some areas have way better imagery than others. i guess if you are only after a small area and use google for somewhere more remote you could have a problem.

an interesting one. would love to hear a response from crown minerals.

And it is not only permit maps that can be out of kilter, the access agreement map is a topo map with hand drawn felt penlines... and the pen line is wider than the river....

And the pen lines are meant o indicate DOC managed land boundries, however when you look at the DOC boundrys on another map, they are no where near where LINZ indicate...????????

Use the LINZ map and run the risk of upseting DOC
Use the DOC map and LINZ could cancel the access agreement.

SHEESH!

Well I hope I can provide a little insight into the basis of all of these "databases" or "maps" and clear up a bit of confusion as to accuracies and discrepancies everyone can see. (Might pay to go grab a beer as I go on for a while... haha)

Firstly, I will deal with Mining Permits and Exploration Permits because Prospecting Permits have different survey requirements. Due to the fact that these permits are registered as an interest again a persons Certificate of Title, a simple diagram is not sufficient by any means. The permit area has to be defined by either a Surveyor undertaking a survey or where the permit area is over an entire parcel of land then the use of the original plan is sufficient. These plans are all dimensionally accurate and are connected into a national coordinate system. The typical accuracies in a rural situation are in the order of up to 20cm, however the equipment we use is capable of millimetre precision. A simple handheld GPS is not a tool us surveyors use as they are only good to +/-5m on a good day! All these surveys are held by Land Information NZ (LINZ) and can be purchased from them for a small fee. So the comment that came up earlier on about "sloppy surveying" I can assure you that this is definitely not the case (dont be too hard on us surveyors haha)!!

So, if the surveys are accurate why do they not display correctly on each of the maps????

On some maps you will see what looks like "property boundaries". This underlying data comes from LINZ and is part of a National database. These "property boundaries" you see on the maps are NOT the legal boundaries of a property, they are merely a guide as to where the boundary may be. These boundaries have accuracies from 3cm anywhere up to 200+m (yes metres). Typically these boundaries are located more accurately in the database where more recent surveys exist, and in urban situations. Have a think where mining permits are usually located... the backcountry, not in the back yard of your 1/4 acre paradise! The reason why this database is not survey accurate is simple, there are thousands of surveys in the country with a large majority being completed in the 1860-1900 era. The simple mathmatical reproduction of these plans is not always possible due to errors and in some cases purely due to rivers and streams shifting course over the years. This LINZ database forms the basis for an extremely large amount of maps in this country. So if a permit area is over an entire parcel of land, then all that is required is a copy of the original survey, which may be over 100 years old. With this being the case then the parcel may appear many metres out on the map you can see, but the survey plan us surveyors use has dimensions connected back to the national coordinate system so we can locate the boundaries on the ground. As more and more new surveys are (boundary, mining and legal surveys) submitted to LINZ this database will get more spatially accurate over time.

A lot of permit areas follow stream/river beds. In this case, a survey plan is still present however it may describe a water boundary as being "true right bank" as boundary. This boundary moves with the river/stream, however to display the parcel on a map it will be shown on where the LINZ database boundaries are for that water parcel which may have been traced off a survey plan dated in the 1800's. The water parcel may also be bounded by legal roads which don't move so where the legal roads are defined (generally over 100yrs ago) is where the permit boundary ends. When this gets overlaid over a recent topo map which will have been created using recent aerial photography, the river/stream may have moved many metres which will explain some of the huge discrepancies people have seen on the paydirt permit map. So the survey plan attached to the Mining Permit is the record of where the permit boundaries are, NOT any other source of data! All other sources of info (other than the survey plan) shall be treated as a GUIDE ONLY. To establish the true boundaries on the ground you will need a copy of the survey plan, and in many cases a surveyor to locate them for you. Every case is different.

Other maps you may use include Topo maps (50 and 250 series) are generally built from aerial photography and will show where roads, driveways, farm tracks are formed, yet they dont show where the actual legal road corridors actually are. They are good to about +/-5m is areas, which is good enough to know where to walk/drive etc. Again I would not expect any permits to fit perfect onto one of these maps.

Google Earth aerial photography... well lets just say these photos these photos seem really helpful (which they are), but to get any kind of data to fit Google Earth photos is near impossible. The reason is that these photos are not Geo corrected to take into account changes in elevation etc. Long story short is that a dead straight fenceline on the ground may not and probably wont appear straight on Google Earth.

Well there is my novel for the night! I hope this may have helped some people and isnt too technical. My main point I wanted to get across is that all these maps, including WAMS etc can only be treated as a guide. For the true legal boundaries you need to refer to the legal document which is 99% of the time a survey plan prepared by a surveyor and held by LINZ. So Gavin has done an excellent job creating the permit map for everyone to view and use, but no matter what he does it will not get any more accurate on the screen until thousands more surveys are completed!

Another issue that does affect the public (in particular miners/fosickers) is the so called "Queens Chain", which I could do another post if there is enough interest to highlight the problems surrounding the so called queens chain.

I am just an amateur gold fosicker and owner of a Goldbug courtesy of Robert, although it has yet to find much other than plenty of scrap, bullets and a couple of old tins. I dont feel I have enough knowledge to be able to contribute about gold techniques etc, however since I am a surveyor I felt this was my chance to give a little back.

Edited by user Sunday, 8 July 2012 12:47:03 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Very informative post. I don't really think you need to ask if a similar post on the Queens Chain would hold interest here. We're all sitting on the edge of our chairs waiting for it to appear!

Hi LBD, the best place for you to start is the Crown Minerals website (http://www.nzpam.govt.nz). On there if you go to the "Minerals" tab, then go to permits you can see the "Search the register". By searching the permit number (they are shown on Paydirt permit map) you will get all the details of the permit. The best thing to do once on this page is to Click the icon under "Document". This will give you a scan of the original permit, and in most cases a copy of the plan. Sometimes (in fact in most cases) the permit area is over whole parcels as opposed to getting a surveyor in to define a small area. Where this is the case, a plan may not be attached to the permit but a property's legal description used instead. The plans for these parcels can be ordered from LINZ website, although my recommendation is that this is taking it a little far as these plans generally dont refer back to features you would find on the ground. A surveyor would really need to set the boundaries out from these plans.

This is really going to the extreme for a recreationalist miner, however for those seeking permit etc it would be recommended to get advice from a surveyor regarding boundaries. My best advice is to use what you can for find for free (permit docs etc) and if you are still unsure then approach the permit holder for clarification so you aren't setting foot on their ground, who knows you may be surprised!

An example is permit number 41791 (mentioned earlier in this thread), this permit covers whole land parcels and the Buller River. In the permit document they actually go to the point of describing the permit boundary in some depth which could be helpful to clarify issues. If you search permit number 41709 you will see a copy of a recent survey plan and how unhelpful they can be to a lay person.

As for access arrangements across private land or may be even DOC(??), these may be in the form of a Right of Way or the like. These are more than likely not public rights, but more rights that benefit the permit holder only. These agreements I think don't form part of the mining permit, but are handled in different ways. As for public access... watch this space!