New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Got away this weekend to give my new toy a proper test in gold country. After some fun with swifter than usual river crossings (including a late night one out of the bush as water levels were rising) I'm happy to say that I can find gold with it :)

Just a wee 0.3 gram nugget I picked up. Made me happy anyway!

Great going - You are now and the track and rest well assured that you will never look back - they will get bigger and better.

@chrischch - Once I got away from areas of obvious human activity I only dug about 3 signals... 1st was a deep deep hole to discover what I think was a bit of old dredge (I more found further up the stream on the bank - looked like it had been there a while). 2nd turned out to be a bit of heavily mineralised rock, and the 3rd was the nugget :)

@Lammerlaw - I'm hoping they'll get bigger and better ;) But even the small stuff makes me happy.

@oroplata - Don't think I even covered the fuel for the trip, let alone made a dent on the detector costs :P

West Coast, it's a bit closer to Chch. Keen to wave the wand around Otago though!

Don't think I'll give you the exact location though as there might be a whole 0.3 grams more to find! :P

Edited by user Sunday, 2 October 2011 8:16:38 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Well done Gavin. I'm pleased you beat me at the auction. It would be tough getting a nugget that size up here.

I got an xterra 705 from the states last week and went to the local racecourse for a couple of hours to wrest some coins from the turf. I think it will pay for itself before I finish the areas in front of the grandstands. I think that toy will be more suited to my current circumstances than the 4500. I may change my mind on my next trip down south though.

Looking forward to the pics of your next one.

Good on you Gavin. Well done. If you put in the time they will come a lot more regularly The Dredge sort of gives it away but there are more than one dredge remains on the West Coast that I know of & god knows how many more that I dont know of. Good luck out there.

JW :)

Nice one Gavin. Must be a great feeling to dig up ya first Gold. My turns comin and it will be a fantastic day.

Shane

hi gavin
very hard to find but there is a horse track on the true right of the gorge going up to the terrace looks like some old house foundations with a lot of water races around the area the main water race comes acoss the top terrace and drops into the gorge there is stacked rocks in the area

the track up to the hut you want to get to used to be a horse access till it gets to the first main creek on the side then it drops very steeply to the river there is the remains of a shed up there
the old timers (not me) took supplies by horse around the water races and slice faces till the hut then unloaded them put the supplies on a flying fox and drop them over the side to the miners below

i have been told the whole of the gorge has been dredged some one flew in by helicoptor and floated down dredging as they went

how far up the gorge did you get?

will meet you up there one weekend to show you round

@kiwikeith - Must admit, went up the left hand side as figured there might not be so much junk from human activity. Bit hard going after a while and just seems to keep climbing! So I don't think I got too far. Figured I'd do the right hand side on the next mission.

@digahole - Just used the wee mono - very impressed! Found the odd bit of mineralised stratum in the rock, but most of the time I was able to figure out it was just mineralisation. Apart from one bit I ended up hacking off a bit of rock before I was satisfied it wasn't gold. 23rd > 25th - I'll see if I can get a bit of time off work, but not sure I can yet as got a lot of time booked off Oct / Nov so don't want to rock the boat too much. I'll have a better idea the week before as it will depend how well I'm doing with my current projects - I'll get my head down and try to knock off as much as possible! Thanks again for the help getting used to the new toy - just gave me a bit of confidence it was making all the right noises and a better idea of the settings I probably want to use - much appreciated :)

@kiwijw - I was wondering if you figured I was around one of those huge dredge monsters from your reply! :P Thanks for that coils guide - very interesting and informative. Interesting that those larger coils are more for deeper bigger nuggets and might miss the smaller stuff - didn't realise that before. So you really have to give it some thought eh! I'm still umming and arring about getting another coil. If I do - I think it will be a large mono one. I'll give you a shout as soon as I've decided what to do. But don't hold off selling them on account of my indecision! Just concentrating on getting a second battery at present as I need that sooner than the larger coil.