Hi guys, A few weekends ago I went for a detecting mission up in to the head waters of an area that was known for very rich gold/quartz specimens. One piece in the early days going 20 ounces found in a crevice in the creek & many smaller specimen pieces & other nuggets of 8 ounces & much rough shoty gold. This lead to a frantic search for the reef that it came from. Numerous very rich stringers & small reefs were found & worked.
As we know....the old timers didnt get it all. This is some that I have found in this area from in the creek.
This area was ground sluiced to win the detrital gold from the surrounding hill sides. It was through doing this ground sluicing & washing the lose material down to bed rock that these rich stringers were uncovered way up out of the creek.
I was working on the theory that there was bound to still be some gold that was still trapped in cracks & crevices that the old timers hadnt dislodged or washed down to there sluice boxs. Or just plain didnt see. Hoping my detecter would 'see" what they couldnt.
There has of course been a lot of bush re growth since those days. So it wasnt easy getting up in to the head waters & in to the location of the mines. It wasnt easy detecting in amonst the bush & growth. I didnt take the minelab on this mission but the Whites Goldmaster. Mainly becuase it broke down in to a smaller bundle to put in my back pack & it has a very good probability of iron read out & very good on specimen gold.
After hacking my through the growth & climbing up steep spurs I came across some bits of quartz scattered about & had also passed a few mine drives. Found a few open shafts that dissapeared down in to the depths & would have linked up to some of the drives I had passed on my way up.
I assembled the detector, ground balanced & away I went. To cut a long story short, I found heaps of old iron rubbish, A stamper shoe. That supprised me way up there as I found no sign of a stamper battery. Maybe it was just used as a dolly pot base for crushing samples. I did find a rock that was nutting off on the detector with a good positive signal & not a hot rock or negative iron signal. I brought that home & waved my Falcon Gold Probe over it & it gave me a positive signal in a few spots & also some negative iron typr signals as well. I crushed up parts of it & seperated the positive & negative signals in to two piles. The negative signals are magnetic & the positive ones arent. I cant see any colours of gold in the positive signals but havnt yet completely crushed & panned them yet.
One find I did dig that was a negative iron signal turned out to be an old pick head complete with the old metal wedge that would have held the handle in place. Maybe the pick was lost or thrown away because the handle had broken. But the handle had completely rotted away when I had found it. I would have thought the pick head would have been too valuable to have thrown away. Broken handle or not. I also found in the creek some nice pieces of jasper.
Jasper.
Alsa No Gold unless by crushing & panning my positive signal pieces I get some colour.
Happy hunting
JW :)
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