New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

fantastic thread graham...love all the gold as we all do...but what really gets me is your collection of pistols...i love them..

Hi Matt

It isnt my reef - its Davids - I was sort of demurring trying to convince him to let me have a talk to MacRaes or another company to discuss the possibilities but would require a written agreement before even hinting as to location as it was not in an area I for one would have even guessed a reef might have been.

As for the stamper - someone pointed out a website with a home built three stamp battery run by an old Stationary motor like the Macraes Flat Deepdell one and I have one similar myself to the one in the website and had already had that in mind but at home here as I already have around a ton of quartz from various locations with gold in it some of which is visible - Davids reef stuff is too collectible to munt up. Whoever it was who pointed out that website (was it you?) really made my day as it was a great device and very inspiring for one such as yours truly here - the only thing I worry about is the neighbour who is always whinging to the authorities about this, that and the next thing and I have a funny suspicion that even a small gold stamper would have her getting a twist in her knickers.

Chris
Glad you like it - I am going onto Goldfields bottles now for a while but might get back to the last of the guns before I wind it up.

Edited by user Friday, 2 March 2012 12:41:46 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

No I didnt save it for last as it has only been found in the last six weeks or so and didnt intend putting it on this thread but it fitted in with the context of things - later I might put a photo of some of its mates on as well when I find them.
The thread started off with a bang and I thought I had put the best things on at the start and finish off with the mundane and more common things so its bottles next and I will limit it as it goes on forever as every locality has its own bottles embossed with the names of breweries, hotels and shanties long gone. i will also limit it to around pre 1910.

Yes I know what you mean by the Gold in Quartz - I am a fan for gold and quartz specimens and I do prefer them to straight gold nuggets.

Edited by user Saturday, 3 March 2012 2:21:48 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

One of the most common goldfield relics are bottles - they came in all shapes and sizes - I would not like to try to guess what percentage held alcohol but it certainly must have been the greater percentage. One of the interesting observations I have made over the years is that the Europeans never seemed to have adopted Chinese wares and goods but the Chinese were clever and astute enough to make good use of European commodities so that they well and truly had the best of both worlds and while trash heaps of European camp sites by and largely contained only European artifacts those of the Chinese camp sites contained both Chinese and European goods, bottles, containers and other items.

I am starting off the bottles section of this thread with a bottle thats special to me personally. For some years my young nephew was a regular gold mining buddy and partner and always came along with myself and friends - his number one hobby was gold mining - and shooting guns off at errant tussocks and anything else that moved.

This bottle is the last one he ever found, found at Lake Mahinerangi on the last trip he ever made up there - before seven days were out he was dead and so the bottle was gifted to me by my sister and brother in law in memory of Mark's last trip

This bottle is of a type commonly found on the goldfields and the number found over the years indicates the popularity of its contents - three sides of the bottle are shown because it only has writing on three sides - the other is blank.

The first side reads SYMINGTONS $ CO
The second side reads EDINBURGH
The thirds side reads ESS COFFEE & CHICORY

Edited by user Saturday, 3 March 2012 9:45:42 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Did you say a digger - just think of what I could do with that - the widest farm track in New Zealand. With a digger I would make the lines on the Nazca Plains look like a kids sandpit meanderings.

I am quite sure that one day with your digger you will hit the mother lode of bottle dumps and then an instant bottle collection - of course in this country of PC goody goodies the Irma Griess types from the Hysterical Places Trust would be doing the best to have thumb screws put on you and giving you the Kempai Tai treatment.

Edited by user Saturday, 3 March 2012 9:50:10 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

There are too many halfwits out there who actually think that New Zealand has history - well it has got history but compared with the bible lands, Europe and Britain and China we have totally and absolutely nothing...I noted with a smile in the book 'The Desert Column' By Ion Idriess which is an amazing book about his adventures with the Australian 'Light Horse' that the padre wasnt all that interested in Roman remains because they were too modern! We have too many halfwits out here who want to be party poopers and make life miserable for the rest of us - political puppets, Irma Griess types, daleks, Darth Vader and Gestapo types - they are all alive and well.

I always wanted to buy a deep steep gully just out of town and own my own private rubbish tip so I could pillage and plunder to my hearts content but the closest I ever came to it was my back yard! Wish your diggers was here - I would have it working overtime chewings its way through my place - track making of course, awful wide ones.

Edited by user Tuesday, 6 March 2012 9:45:23 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Jafa - yes I k now that you are absolutely correct - old here is absolutely laughable and given a bit of power the dunderheads who are members of little minority groups seem to think they can run the show - it is totally obscene and laughable that you cant dig up bottles which are 100 year old here and yet in England you can dig up a Roman glass jar and no body blinks an eye really.

In Norway apparently one branch of my family has lived on the same farm for 500 years! In Rome they go to excavate deep foundatiuuons for buildings and break into chambers which were streets and shops back in Roman times, in Herculaneum they dug a well and discovered caverns which when excavated turned into a city down under the ground buried at the same time as Pompeii!

Its high time the real people ran this country!

So I guess I'll be the one to ask the dumb question......What is/was chicory exactly?

Bushells still sell bottles of sweetened coffee and chicory essence although the chicory content

is only .004%.It's quite good if you don't like too strong a coffee taste.

Intermission time and a photos of what the old timers were looking for - gold - about two ounces I took out of a crevice some years ago in a favourite spot of mine. This was not the total amount as I had taken out the better nuggets by the time the photo was taken...on this claim it was extremely unusual to find colours such as you find in the Arrow ...when you found gold its was mostly nuggety gold.

Edited by user Saturday, 10 March 2012 12:22:50 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified