What To Look For On The Goldfields (New To Prospecting)

Hi Guys, just wondering if anyone knows of an old mine site near the sunshine coast which i can go to in order to walk around and see for myself the things that have been mentioned in the previous posts. I hear what you guys are saying but i have never been to an olden days site and would love to take some photos, have lunch and a walk around and get a feel for things. It goes without saying that I'm not looking for old mineshafts or abandoned company sites, but rather something more historical and of the beaten track so to speak.
Cheers

Thanks Loamer - and others..I've been creeping around the edges as a sponge and learned massively ..argyles setups (I have an old detector) and now how to read and understand the ground you are attempting to work..great information.

Great thread Loamer, this info is going to be very handy when i get myself a good detector.
Cheers
Ryan

Yep Ryan....one of the best informative threads i have seen in any forum.

A lot of time and effort went into this work in order to share with us.

Gold star for our Loamer!

Great post loamer. Really found reading this very helpful.

What a fantastic insight into what and where you should look to find gold. Loamer puts it into words that the novice can understand

many thanks Loamer, I have been prospecting off and on for 45 years first just panning then dredging up along the Goulburn and the Loddon rivers until they were banned (By the greenies). I found your threads very informative.

this info is very helpful. I am only new to prospecting and every bit of advice helps. I have tried a few spots behind ballarat without success. I did notice a square cut shaft about 1.5m x 1.5m wide and it looked as though it dropped at least 25 to 30ft straight down. I feel like i am wasting my time in these areas as the depth of this shaft tells me that the gold must be way way down. Also the trash i got around these sites was very deep in very soft soil almost like fertalizer. Are there any aids to determine how close the bedrock is to the surface?

Great read and helpful too
i have a mate who owns a property in an old gold mining area, he has diggings on parts of his land so a lot of what I have read on this thread is now starting to make sense looking at his property.
Thanks !

Great post! Very helpful?

MYSPOT said:

Hello loamer,

Ahh yes the old puddlers, a very good indicator but one thing I have noticed. The ground where the horse has been is so compacted and very hard to dig, but you are correct as many things can be found around them.

chow

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You not supposed to dig on or near a puddler, that is history and should be respected.

We had a historical area here within town limits (next street over) that had diggings, remains of a shaft, etc etc along a creek bed - Cornwall's Gully .... that disappeared very quickly to housing. The last good sized nugget that we know of that came from this area was the Providence Nugget 1100g in 2005 ..... nice. I had always thought that this was designated a historical area and thought that it would be preserved as part of the towns history - but sadly no.

I've been doing a bit of ongoing research on our area/district and came across a gully that I hadn't heard mentioned to date, nothing written that I can find. To me it had a funny name - Pancake Gully and I had just thought that the old timer mighta loved pancakes - who knows lol! I hadn't realised that this is the type of the shape of the nugget? - quote "This kind of surface area to mass ratio in a gold specimen we refer to as "pancake" in style because it gives you so much of the mass on the display face." So maybe there was a lot of flat nuggets found in that gully.

Anyway, I don't really know how the old timers (who were probably a lot younger than many of us on the forum) mined - I know I've found a lot of workings around here (i've driven past some daily for years that are hidden just off the side of the road that you would never guess were there) that I'd love to have explained to me.

Anyway back into it ......

Dose anyone have a general direction that they follow when searching ?.
If the reefs along hillsides are in a n/s direction in a goldfield ,generally speaking .Would you increase your chances of intersecting a patch by going across the grain E/W .

Just Read through the 8 pages and Thank you Loamer for the Fantastic Information and photos to demonstrate what you are talking about .

Dug said:

Dose anyone have a general direction that they follow when searching ?.
If the reefs along hillsides are in a n/s direction in a goldfield ,generally speaking .Would you increase your chances of intersecting a patch by going across the grain E/W .

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Work parallel to the reef to increase your chances of intersecting a run of gold. As the gold has shed down the slope it generally spreads out in a fan like pattern from the source. Once you get your first find look above and below, if your lucky and can get 3 finds join the dots and you get a pretty good idea which direction the gold run is heading and which direction it might have come from but remember towards the bottom of the slope it could be spread along the line of reef by tens of metres and will obviously narrow the closer you get to the source. There could also be multiple sources and this is where plotting your finds on a GPS becomes very helpful.

Thanks heaps of useful info here

Going to try some virgin ground tomorrow, on the wrong side of stuart hwy apparently, but at the base of a plateau, so ill have a look anyway. Is getting hot now, so this might be my last walk before next dry season, will be 38 where im going tomorrow, not extreame humidity yet, but starting to climb!

thankx loamer....what a great read

Lovin all this great information. I Just need to find the right place in my area.

Hi guys! new to this site and to detecting. As a newbie I really did appreciate the information in this thread! thanks to everyone who put work into it. especially loamer! Saved me many hours of trial and error and given me a decent understanding of the general workings of it all.
I am still looking around to get a decent detector, and I am dying to get out and about. will Probably be looking at alot of places that are less done especially in the Gippsland area.
Looking to make friends in the area who are keen to do the same kind of thing.
Would definately be interested in a compiled pdf or book with all the info in this thread if someone has put it together!

Regards
Robert