jrbeatty

Karelian: 

It's sad to see the white mullock heaps nearly all pushed. Only a few years back that area was just as the old Diggers had left it -  😞 

40 minutes ago, karelian said:

I'm going to spend a bit on time exploring the hillside, gullies are a bit deep but lots of shallow ground to explore. Love that the area still offers a lot of potential. I'd love three grams.... never mind 30 ounces. Dream big..

The shallows below the reef are a good spot for SDC's and QED's (or any detector with a small coil)

Interesting geology there. The emplacement of the Tarnagulla granodiorite pluton to the east (as well as the surrounding Moliagul and Kooyoora Plutons) caused gold rich quartz fracture veins (reefs) to form in the Ordovician sediments as they slowly thrust through them. The Mcintyre Range is a hardened contact metamorphic edge to the Tarnagulla pluton (as is Rheola hill to the north)

During the early Tertiary, heavy continuous rainfall eroded both the plutons and rich contact zones, depositing large nuggets in paleovalleys (leads) radiating off them. Possum Hill lead and Guys Rush lead are two examples, as are Caters, White and Humbug hills  to the north. The Berlin goldfield north of Rheola is also the remnant of an even larger paleovalley that has now completely eroded away, leaving only giant nuggets sitting on a granite bottom!

Ah Mcintyre! From the top of that hill where the Matrix reef is located you are overlooking one of the world's great nugget fields.

Found much good gold in that area, biggest being 30 oz. The shallow ground around the reef yielded plenty to the early vlf detector operators.

Gerry: I always take two detectors, not uncommon to have technical issues with one.

I only work new ground, so I do the initial prospecting with the lightweight QED PI. I then run a GPX over found patches if it's deep or highly mineralised. Occasionally this brings up extra gold.

Ok Gerry, I'll bite :)

Found gold with all my detectors over the years (starting in the late 80's with the ML GT 16000) with one exception:

The Garrett Infinium. Couldn't find its own backside using both hands, I walked over a heap of good gold with it (as I later discovered using detectors more suitable for Australian conditions) The detectors that have found me the most ozs so far would have to be the SD 2200 and the QED, with the 5000 not far behind.

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

I wish I was around for all this stuff, I missed out on the glory days.

Simon: the glory days are only ever as far away as the next patch of new ground. You make your own glory days.

The important thing is to keep looking for new ground. The safe old familiar flogged areas are, sadly, never going to be the stuff that dreams are made of.  😞

A 1985 Gem and Treasure Hunter (later Gold Gem and Treasure) from Australia. 

The magazine had just been purchased by a new Australian detector company called Minelab Electronic industries.

The Goldseeker 15000 was being tested at the time by a young bearded bloke called Reg Wilson, yet not a single Minelab product appears anywhere. There is an advertorial for the new Whites GM6100D and others for Bounty Hunter, Tesoro and the Garrett A2B Groundhog.

These were also the days when your first colour could well be too heavy to comfortably carry around 🙂

Nice, but he needs coaching lessons on centering signals and target recovery. Painful to watch.

19 hours ago, Reg Wilson said:

- I reflect on the remarks of John Hider-Smith, the best detector operator that I ever met. "Oh, that's the sort of gold you want to find?"

Yes Reg.  John gave up the gold not long after the belated release of the Minelab SD2000. He was the principal Minelab prototype tester here for many years. Took to teaching detecting lessons for awhile, but soon moved on to farming tourists on Victoria's "shipwreck" coast. 

He once mentioned to me his greatest prospecting regret was ignoring a 250 oz piece, calling it a junk signal.

He has never returned to prospecting.  His "sort" of gold was now rapidly disappearing and chasing flysh*t had no appeal at all. 

John with his kind of gold. Tertiary piece found not far from Longbush, Moliagul Victoria. 

The current US Army PSS-14 (incorporating both conventional detector and ground penetrating radar) could have interesting civilian potential. 

Anyone over there tried one? 

7 hours ago, davsgold said:

Well done Rick, great finds mate, and excellent videos, it's good to see nice gold being dug up even if I can only watch someone else having the fun right now.  Keep up the good work.

cheers dave

 

Same here Dave. All weed spraying and cattle feeding for me till Victoria opens up again.

 Good to see those faulty X coils still delivering the goods. Well done Rick!  :)

Top stuff Simon, one of my favourites :)

15 hours ago, geof_junk said:

That is why we learn to pinpoint with a coil, the exemption might be in rocks a pinpointer would be handy when using a hammer and chisel. 

Geof: Rarely use a pinpointer either, Coil on edge works fine - but now avoid digging holes in the dark  :)

Damaged 30 oz piece:

2 hours ago, RickUK said:

of course of you are a nugget hunter then that does not matter as these folks use a pick axe and i guess it does not matter if a find gets hit

Rick: Damn oath it matters! 

Always dig around the target location with the pick, using the pointy end to prise up the centre part. That way nothing gets hurt and the piece remains collectable.

Some friends and I once dinged a lovely 30 oz piece digging in the dark -

16 hours ago, AussieMatt said:

I don't think they were given the opportunity to. Each of those areas has been payable at some point in time.

There are similar stories of earlier but hushed up "discoveries" in Victoria too.

Jim has also hit the nail on the head. The indigenous people of Australia also knew of not only gold but coal & other minerals.

We shouldn't discount Hargraves role in Australia altogether. He may not have been the first to discover payable gold but he was the first to convince the Government of the time to acknowledge it & kick started the gold rush in Australia, a very important part of history.

First published in 1963,  historian Geoffery Blainey, in his excellent book "The Rush That Never Ended" detailed the numerous significant pre - Hargreaves gold finds already mentioned above. Nothing new in the "Herald" article indeed.

Blainey credits Hargreaves with being a master self publicist who found little gold personally, but by telling all and sundry where and how gold may be recovered (In order to obtain governmental financial reward) forced the government's hand to legalise gold mining long before it was ready or prepared. 

This led to the hurried introduction of the licensing system, which by nature of its heavy financial cost to diggers, eventually led to armed rebellion at Eureka.

22 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

Fred Mason asked me many times 'Where did you park?'  haha

He loved detecting parking lots.

I remember the legendary John Hider Smith once cleaned out a very rich patch at Wychitella, Vic, except for the 7 ozer he always parked on top of . 

Some unkind soul left a note there telling him he needn't worry about it anymore -  :)

Another prospector cleaned out a rich "doze and detect" MRC at Waanyarra Vic, except the richest part was under the vehicle park.

John H S found that one, so he more than broke even -

Nice GB. Another one colour patch - dontcha just hate it when that happens!

Jerry: The US sure has better crystalline colours than Oz. Not jealous, much - OK, a bit!

Nice work Peg.

Love those smooth colours -  :)

And: Thoroughly enjoyed that. Like others here, I rarely watch gold videos, but I'm glad I made an exception for that one.

Steve: That's one hell of a nice piece. Like many, I've also found some crackers that others had started digging - and probably also left a few "junk signals" for others.  :)

That's a great read Chet. 

Captures the essence of the early gold rush years extremely well. Sadly, no images survive.

10 hours ago, Jim in Idaho said:

I look at what you call prospecting from two different perspectives. IMHO nugget hunting, and using a highbanker, sluice, etc., isn't prospecting. I define prospecting as trying to find unknown deposits of marketable metals (a prospect). Real prospecting involves, at least most of the time, going to places where the odds of finding anything are low, but there is the chance of a big payoff, in the event you do find something. They are separate disciplines of the same overall activity, and to some extent, they use some of the same tools. I'm sure not everyone would agree.

Jim

Count me in Jim. I prefer prospecting to fossicking. All or nothing - quite often nothing, but then you can get very lucky sometimes.

bigtim1973:  best to approach it as a hobby with occasional benefits. 👍 

Prospected gold found miles from any known goldfield:

Gerry: Just love those Yankee specimens - :)

Nice work!

8 hours ago, geof_junk said:

We are all getting old

 

Speak for yourself Geoff   :)

Detected a gold bottle lying in the bush  - and then Reg Wilson claimed it back a few minutes later :)