New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Real forlorn country - Over the years we had some interesting and strange experiences here at night and I never liked the thought of staying alone up here. The very first time I was ever here about 1970 I walked straight into the creek within the scope of this photo broke open a crevice and within minutes had found half an ounce of nuggety gold. Also within the scope of these photos I found about two ounces in a small hole below the cliffs in the back ground... the cliffs on the left hand side of hte photos but on the right hand side of the stream where there are three sort of white marks which is the rock showing.

In the creek behind the hut and obscured by the hill the bedrock of the creek had been drilled with hand augers presumable to lower the water level.

Just out of view of these photos to the right of the hut and in the gully on the photographers sid eof the hut I found an overhang with all the miners cache of gear - the augers used to drill into the creek bed, billy, a sluicing gun nozzle end fitting and other assorted items.

The gold in the last photo was all found within view of the photos.

Sometimes I tend to think that we were totally daft going gold mining on some of the days we did and I can still picture my gold mining friend at the age of 88 falling into the river behind where my cobber is standing in the second photo - it was not the fact that he fell in but rather the fact that it was snowing heavily and in retrospect I cannot remember how I was even game enough to attempt to get up the side of the mountain in the snow to get to this spot in my Landrover in the first place. I had to get him back down from the mountain to the hut shown in the first photos and get the fire going - The only words he said to me were "By Joves this is a great adventure"

Edited by user Saturday, 24 December 2011 9:57:48 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I agree Graham

Are you sure you don't want to write a book?

Thanks for the pics of the gold by the way. Good to see David is well and truly getting his monies worth from his machine!!!

Ha ha....so you are going blind as well?..... How the hell can you not see the difference between a minelab GP Extreme & a little gold bug....bugger me... LOL :)
Enjoy your post immensely. Many thanks.

JW :)

Edited by user Tuesday, 6 December 2011 7:27:52 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I'm enjoying the read and photos too, great stuff!

thanks for sharing your stories and pics, nice tussock country. ps i'd buy the book!.

GIDDAY,GT, thanks for the stories, I am pleased to hear of your expliots in the gold mining era and the local history, most of what i can find in writtern form all dates back a long way. The info you are sharing is current and will never be lost now you are writing it up. Ive read all Barry crumps books and know most of them were bull or stories he borrowed of others and changed to suit himself. Keep it up, ther are plenty of us out ther that want to what have got to share . I have just started dredgeing for the season and need to keep checking out all the holes ,this is a new area for me so will let you all know how we get on, have found a few bits with quarzt stuck to them, but according to records all the working reefs were south of me so might get lucky and find some virgin ground upriver Cherrs, keep up the good work GT

The bottom end of our claim was in the gorge and a great place it was to potter - these photos were taken when the river was high - I liked it when it was high as it moved a great deal of gravel and exposed gold.
The cliff I climbed to get below the goats is on the left - my son and his cobber have climbed the one on the right - the really high one.

In the first photo a long crevice followed along on the right hand side and goes up into the bank and you can see it up the hill. A lot of gold came out of it in the early to mid 1980's

From the next two photos to the bend above not much gold was found at all and yet there is only a couple of hundred yards between the photo looking downstream through between the cliffs and the next two looking upstream...but between where the downstream and upstream photos were taken is another story.

It was also between the downstream and upstream photos that a certain department took photos of their own excavations and presented them as evidence of our gold mining damage...at the claim hearing the dishonest deception was revealed and it more or less humiliated the Lap Dog who took them, faithfull arselicker of his masters that he was...or should that be 'is'

The fourth photo show some of the section of river in between - just on the bedrock here nuggets were picked up by me weighing up to 4dwt or 6grammes and George Welch got a 12dwt nugget here.

Edited by user Friday, 9 December 2011 3:33:25 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

re photos Great pics looks like ther is a bit of snow and ice around. Its looking abit cold for me ,I havnt got a heated wetsuit yet, maybe next year. THe photos look familar but not to sure . You would know my face if you saw the truck but that was a while ago, yes gold is where you find it and not always where it should be. Compared to the Palmer river Nth QUeensland, the rivers here are realy clear and no little crocs to take off your fingers All the info you have is going to be invaluebal to the next generation of diggers so please write it down before its lost forever ,we never know when our time could be up,not yet i hope ,got plenty of gold to find yet CHERRS!!!!

excellent pics there graham..lookinf forward to more..great info also.

ya it is a shame...but i told robert once i am back to work i am going to save a bit to get a cheap 4X4 so we can pack our grear in it and head down one weekend..it will be nice to be a bit richer again to travel..lol