Quartz Reef At Old Gold Diggings On Magnetic Island

[Erik Oostra]

These videos and pictures were taken this morning at an unnamed gold digging at the western side of Horseshoe Bay.. the diggings are in the saddle of the two hills in the first picture.. the first video is of the quartz reef in which gold has been found, it runs for over a hundred metres and once you've worked out its direction it's easier to follow.. I've never found it the other times i've been up here, but this morning I followed it down the ridge into a gully where it became really obvious again.. the next video shows where prospectors at the end of the 1880s to the early 1900s sank shallow shafts into the reef, they where usually a few metres deep but it's hard to spot where they are these days.. the last pictures show some of the quartz crystals found along the creek on the way up to the diggings.. didn't find any gold today but I didn't really expect to, and there wasn't enough water in the creeks to sluice for specks.. 

  

[Gold Catcher]

Stunning, thanks for sharing. These quartz veins look juicy. I would definitely crush some material up and pan out. How deep do these veins go do you know?

[Valens Legacy]

Beautiful area that you are in, and I think that you have real potential there.

Wish I were there also to help you out but hey I have to be somewhere else working.

Good luck and happy hunting.

Next time take a small pump and set your sluice up on the beach.

Once again I am out of likes.

[Erik Oostra]

6 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:

How deep do these veins go do you know?

according to old geo reports the reef is a few metres deep in some places.. i wish i'd taken a picture in the gully where it made up the bank of a small creek.. it's much wider in some places too, the video shows a narrower stretch after I just found it.. last few times there's always been tons of leave litter, but we had a little bushfire up there about 6 months ago which cleared it up nicely 😁

[Sheppo]

Take note of which way those veins run (N/S or E/W etc) as most of them generally run in the same direction.

[geof_junk]

That saddle reminds me of a reef in Vic. that crossed a saddle like that. My mate found a number of bits of gold heading down the slope. While he was working down hill I went up hill to have a look of the area for more reefs running parallel to it. I only walked a few feet and hit a multi gram bit. We found out that the incline of the reef was against the slope and found a few more bits on each side of the visible reef quartz up hill of it where it was eroded away. So if you are looking for reefs it pays to see the direction and incline of it on the map first.

[Erik Oostra]

1 hour ago, geof_junk said:

So if you are looking for reefs it pays to see the direction and incline of it on the map first.

I didn't record the direction but the gps waypoint for this unnamed digging put me straight on top of it.. The quartz reef runs along a ridge with a shallow gully on either side of it.. I've detected along the 'spine' of it and up and down the gullies.. so far I've just detected around the old digging, the reef goes along much further (could this be a fault line?).. I'll be heading back up there with a mono coil and also the equinox for along the bedrock in the creeks.. I'll also record the direction it runs.. 

[Steve Herschbach]

Good on you Erik. I genuinely love just poking around like you are doing, almost more than anything else. Just exploring and looking around. Great stuff, especially as I look out my window at even more snow. 

[RiverRat]

On 1/27/2021 at 11:33 PM, Erik Oostra said:

I didn't record the direction but the gps waypoint for this unnamed digging put me straight on top of it.. The quartz reef runs along a ridge with a shallow gully on either side of it.. I've detected along the 'spine' of it and up and down the gullies.. so far I've just detected around the old digging, the reef goes along much further (could this be a fault line?).. I'll be heading back up there with a mono coil and also the equinox for along the bedrock in the creeks.. I'll also record the direction it runs.. 

 Nice vuggy quartz! 

Veins sometimes have parallel shoots, so maybe or maybe not on it being an actual fault line.  The old-timers would sometimes hunt for  parallel shoots which can be anywhere from a few feet to hundreds of yards apart and can dip and resurface along the length of it.  I would venture to guess that whatever direction that vein is trending is the direction the fault lines run. Geology books on faults and geothermals for that area are good to check out. If you want to invest the time, you could survey it and try to plot where that vein might run and try to find it or a parallel in an adjacent valley or the next hill/mountain. You could probably do it with Google Earth.