New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

A busy Wednesday in queenstown

G'day henry, yer there's a few nice nuggets still about. Have definitely had my best year fossicking this year. Nice to see another queenstowner on here, most have disappeared lately

I had a terrano until the arrow river claimed it as its own now I have a safari.

Great finds Gav and Henry...out of curiosity are the finds by detector, dredge or hand sluicing?
Rob.

Damn, I was up there a couple of weeks ago, did not find anything so must have been looking in all the wrong places.

Did you go towards deep creek jw? I wandered that way last month, it's a long way over the green gates saddle. 6 hours return. Managed to find a way down a bluff into the creek, nice gold all round there, just a mini mission to get it.

I don't suppose you know the history of deep creek jw re; past claims ect? I heard that there used to be a remote community in Maori gully back in the day, of some 30+ miners and family's, And some of the best gold around skippers was found hydrosluicing the hills in this area. Same guy who told me the story also claimed to have lived/worked between coronet creek saddle and deep creek for a couple of months and detected 18oz of nuggets during the time there. I have been to the saddle and could quite believe the story, there's quite a historical show of huge intensity up there, tailings and storage ponds, water races ect. Makes me wander why it's not claimed now considering the colours u find around there.

It would be nice to get a "pay dirt" group claim in skippers for sure but it's hard trying to rouse up enough people to go in on it. I suppose you only need 4 or 5 serious guys though. My friend has a claim by the branches and he said that he got it for 5 thousand bucks. So it would only be a grand each plus fees.

Shame that the skippers creek got claimed recently, I found nice Quartz gold specimen in there over winter last year and thought I was close to a seam as all the gold I found was rough and pitted, wander if the new claim owner will let me snipe it for the location info!!

I'm sorry but i had to crack up at that :) it might have done you a favour though, Hard to beat a safari, monster machines that dont stop!

Hey Simon

Good questions all.

The QE2 trust is not a government body, so is a step removed. You are of course assuming that goverment depts actually coordinate with each other, lol, unlikely when fees are being charged.

For the record, Mutt bought some sheep stations, and possible only one of them has been tenure reviewed, Motatapu from memory. So therefore he only owned a pastoral licence over the other three being Glencoe, Soho and Coronet Stations. Therefore this land is owned by the Crown, and is in all probability administered by LINZ. Now for the interesting part. How did Mutt move his OIO obligations, like building public access tracks and eradicating weeds and put them into NZ agencies hands like the QE2 trust, and say he was giving land back to NZers, LOL, the land is already owned by the Crown ie NZers. Its like selling poer stations back to the people who paid for them in the first place.

Sorry getting off track here a bit, Mining permits can actually be applied for over anything you like, I think with the exception of National Parks, and reserves, and they can even go as far as to be granted. It is up to the permit holders to get rights of access to the minerals and all necessary consents. So the deep Creek application may still be granted, Franz will then have to arrange access to the minerals with the affected parties, which in this case will be QE2 trust, Mutt and Linz, as the management groups and landowners.

It wont necessarily be impossible, but I can imagine that there is going to be a lot of reports and guarantees and bonds to be put in place. The QE2 trust is not strictly opposed to mining, but they will consider on a case by case basis. They are on a learning curve with this area as well, this is the largest covenant area that they have had to administer, and they are aware of all the inerested parties on all sides of the fence so to speak.

With respect to existing claims, if the access rights have been established, then these area accepted. If the rivers are large enough, ie and have a legal marginal strip, then the riverbed is separate from the run titles, for example, most of the Arrow River outside of the run parcel boundaries, and therefore are unaffected by the QE2 covenant. deep crk and many others around the same size and smaller dont have this luxury. The way to find out who owns the river bed and what title it is on, and who mamagers it, is to request a land Status report from LINZ, and I recommend that should be your first step if considering a claim application. While you think that QE2 might be a hurdle, consider how high the hurdle is if Doc manages it.

GD7