Porters Retreat & Grabben Gullen

Hey peeps so i went to porters retreat once and had a dig around for the day. I didnt find much so i thought id have another crack at it sometime. My problem is though is there a specific area at porters retreat where id find these elusive buggers? Is there a specific wash layer to keep an eye out for and where in gods green earth would i even dig for gems? Gem hunting is very new to me and it has me stumped as i must be doin somethint wrong. Any kind of help and info on this place would be good. And also that grabben gullen i had a go there years ago with no success either . Again is there any specifics i shouod be looking for and in the case of grabben gullen would i be better off heading up towards the bowling alley or trying to work downstream of the bridge? If people are sensitive about any info they want to provide feel free to msg me.
Cheers pawny

Very interested in the forthcoming answers to your questions Pawny as I too have not had much success the couple of times I have been to Grabby and Porters.Wondering is it better to dig up on the hill where others have been digging at Porters or down in the creek?Where is the "Bowling Alley" at Grabby?

I would be interested to find out because i am heading up to porters and grabben gully this weekend

Eldorado said:

Very interested in the forthcoming answers to your questions Pawny as I too have not had much success the couple of times I have been to Grabby and Porters.Wondering is it better to dig up on the hill where others have been digging at Porters or down in the creek?Where is the "Bowling Alley" at Grabby?

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I did up the hill.
After spending what seemed many hours digging a hole many feet deep I was finally rewarded with an old bread bag! :brokenh:

Lol was it an ancient bread bag made by the aboriginals? Lol

Eldorado said:

Very interested in the forthcoming answers to your questions Pawny as I too have not had much success the couple of times I have been to Grabby and Porters.Wondering is it better to dig up on the hill where others have been digging at Porters or down in the creek?Where is the "Bowling Alley" at Grabby?

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The bowling alley is up river from the bridge i believe but im new to gems so i havent had much luck nor exploration. But in terms of porters i found a real nice layer of ancient wash but not a single sign of any gem amongst it lol 3 buckets later and not any colour. So then i took some gravel from right next to the creek and low and behold a nice blood red gem of some kind and a small sapphire but they are so small haha bout match head size for rhe red one anyways. Thats the extent of my luck haha

It's all about sampling really..
I found some wash that looked the goods had no sapphire and other wash that was easy digging and a paler colour had sapphire in it.
Ofcourse if It wasn't for testing each layer and focusing on the "good looking stuff" I would have gone home empty handed.
For the very short time I was there I was happy with the colours found
Reeko

I found a heap of these at Grabby whilst digging behind a big boulder in the creek back from the bridge.They look black until some light is shone through them.

Sticking to the creek area Pawny is probably the best bet, as Reeko said you need to do a bit of sampling from different areas there. Gemstones can be even more difficult to find than gold and you need luck on your side to get good ones.

Up at Inverell last time my mate and myself were digging in one spot for 4 days and getting a few bits but nothing good, a family turned up and were digging just across the creek from us and with about 1/2 and hour found a suberb stone that would have been about 8ct. :N:

They only stayed half the day and were rewarded with a cracker of a stone, we dug there for a week and left with bugger all, my mate got a 20ct black sapphire but nothing with any decent colour.

Need a good helping of luck on any day out in the gemfields.

I've never really seen much success come from the ancient wash layers at Porter's Retreat. I tried digging it the last three times I was there and the sapphires are in very small quantities, comparably the same as sapphire bend I'd say. However I myself have had relative success digging in the creek bed and I have seen a 27ct blue dogtooth sapphire come from it as well (I got a 30ct spinel as a consolation prize :lol: ). But even still the quantity of sapphires often does pale in comparison to the glen innes area unfortunately from what I've seen. As for grabben gullen I can't really help you there, never really had much success there at all for the couple or so times that I have been there. Best of luck! :Y:

Thanks for the great replies guys. Yeh i have been doing some reading and it all depends on where you go as to the quality of the stones. I might try porters retreat again sometime soon but this time i might actually try in the creek itself instead of teh bank etc.

Hi Pawny. A couple of decades ago I did a lot of digging at Porters Retreat. Found quite a few sapphires too. I remember we would spend days digging holes all over for little return and usually would finish our trips sieving gravel out of the creek bed and that is when we would get most of our finds. Most were small but with the odd nice one to sweeten the pot.
Unless you'd seen the many HUGELY deep holes people had dug around the creek you wouldn't believe how much that place has been turned over. We grabbed a couple of sieves one day from a temporarily abandoned "crater" and found 3 or 4 nice stones in each of our top sieves plus a lot of smaller stones in the bottom sieves. (Unfortunately we had to get out before the owners of the "crater" returned)
Early last month "the boss" and I returned to Porters for the first time in more than 20 years. Spent a day there for a couple of tiny blues. "The boss" dug a hole next to the water for half a dozen small zircons. The highlight of our trip was watching a young fox come right up to us for a feed of cracker biscuits - then hung around nearby for the rest of the day.
We are planning to be back there for another shot later in the year, when the weather is a bit warmer.