The Gold I've Missed

[jrbeatty]

Hard to know what the story is with that run, Egxie4, but if the gold was not too jagged then you were possibly working the shallow beginnings of a tertiary lead. These can be phenomenally rich but sometimes missed by the old boys since, as you noticed, they have few clues to identify them by.

The reason they were missed is because early prospectors usually started further down the lead and followed the run upstream, guided by the pipeclay (Pipeclay is the kaolinised (oxidised) bedrock material from the lower levels of an ancient streambed)  Once this thinned and disappeared the only clue to continue searching by was following the line of colours in the wash.  If these stopped appearing then they often moved on, sometimes incorrectly assuming they had reached the start of the lead.

The Chinese diggers were more cautious and often puddled large areas around the heads of old leads. The Whipstick forest north of Bendigo has many examples of this practice. Had the Chinese been working your area then chances are they would have found your 600 oz.

That's a large quantity of gold, BTW. I'll be applying for a loan from you and Yellowfin shortly.

How are you finding the QED?

[egixe4]

54 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

What kind of trees were they harvesting there?

Wouldn't that be interesting to see big nuggets in the roots.  Were all the trees sawed or did some of them get tumbled and throw up a bunch of roots?

They would have been harvesting the hardwood gum trees, most were sawn leaving a stump a few feet high, the gold they would have first discovered would have been in the roots of trees, fallen over during storms 

[jrbeatty]

3 hours ago, egixe4 said:

Hint: if you see Reg's or JR's dial out bush, they ain't there for nothing 

Sometimes we are, unfortunately! 

[egixe4]

It was an interesting run of gold JR, that's for sure, I do have a photo of the 7oz and a few others found on day 1, and I still have the 1oz bit picked up with the 3500.

I will bring them to Reg's

Thanks for your input JR, interesting info.

Ha that money's long gone JR, YF got involved with a sheila and bought a 1 bedroom apartment (Nest) in Double Bay with his share, he paid around $127k for it, and complained bitterly about how expensive and what a rip off it was.

I think gold was around $600 an oz at the time, but I'm not sure.

He's not complaining now though, She's gone and he still owns the place.Qed is doing well JR, but I've not been out for a good while, how are you guys doing with it, have you been out?

[Jin]

Thanks JR, another bit of prospecting knowledge I learned today (pipeclay story). 

[Reg Wilson]

jin, very helpful is JR. Get him to tell you the story of how he advised an old  farmer on just how we knew where to find gold , and how successful that farmer became. And he might just tell you how much gold that cost us. 

[Jin]

Oh, I hope your only joking and Jr isn't in trouble.

I originally started my post with "Reg might be a little angry JR that you are giving away too many secrets" But thought id better not. I've read pretty much every post you have written on the internet and learned some pretty valuable things from you also as I have from others.

I find when I come across people while detecting that are new to detecting I like to stop and help them if I can. A couple of times though I told them too much and they also found gold that I should of. Doesn't really bother me (would if it was over an ounce) but then again I don't rely on gold for my income.      

[Reg Wilson]

Don't worry Jin, I'm not angry at JR. I just promied that I wouldn't let him forget. It's only a little joke between us.

[jrbeatty]

Very droll, Reg    Here's our old cocky mate working another patch he found:

Don't worry Jin, I'm always in trouble one way or another!

Helping others with basic information (most prospectors know this stuff backwards anyway) never does harm and often has benefits eventually.

Jim Stewart was worse than me, often revealing his finds exact locations to others (top bloke he was!)

I suppose he figured he'd done his best with them and left little behind, but I remember when I first stayed with him, he let me loose on one of his patches within walking distance of his Laanecoorie Park. He had flogged it with an SD prototype (pulling about 15 ounces) but this machine had developed a fault and was no longer sensitive to deep gold.

I dug several nice slugs with my 2100 before feeling guilty and showing him what he'd missed. He seemed shocked momentarily but absolutely refused my offer of an even split, insisting I keep it.

I shouted him a slab of beer and we drank most of it that night, with the stories and gold theories flying freely. Next day we dug the rest of the gold, and that was the beginning of our partnership. I sure miss him. Like Reg, he had a great sense of humour as well.