⭐ Alluvial Show n Tell

Very sad . I remember as a small boy travelling on a steam train to Sydney and going on the turntable at Wallerawang. Cinders in your eyes and the smell of coal smoke.
Memories that todays youth will probably never experience.
Sometimes, if I am lucky, I might see the end of The Chase on telly. I am never surprised how little the young contestants know about early Australia never mind the rest of the world. Very sad really.
Mackka 8.( 8.( 8.( 8.( 8.( 8.( 8.( :|

Got this from the Turon last weekend. About 4 or 5 small buckets.


My 10yo girl designed a river sluice which we built together. Seemed to work ok although I think it was clogging up. Need to either tweak the sluice, tweak the water flow or tweak the rate she feeds it in.

looks good mate and quality time spent win win

Wolf that sluice looks pretty damn good, a couple of nice pickers there as well. How was the water flow where you were? It's been bloody low up there. I was struggling to get enough to run dream mat before we had that bit of rain. It's a bit of a blessing and a curse really, getting into crevices and exposed bedrock that is normally under at least 2-3 ft of water and yet not enough flow to run the sluice.

From the looks of it, you would fair well to lower the angle of those riffles maybe? It's a little hard to tell from that upright pic but they struck me as being a little too high, might be an illusion. If they are high though you might be pushing gold down the sides where those gaps are as the flow would be increased either side and possibly allow colour to escape.

Hopefully see you on the Turon sometime They are predicting rain all weekend of course!

nice show of colour there mate well done and getting the young ones involved in the build cant beat that

AussieChris - water flow was ok, although I went out again on sunday and was struggling. I found a spot where the river was squeezed between some large bedrock and set it up there. I had to have a healthy flow to get the water to clear the material.

I too am concerned about the height of the riffles. It is 10mm aluminium that I belted with a hammer to get an angle and reduce the height. When I dont have enough water flow it takes ages to clear through the sluice.

It seems as though there are two main designs of sluice - fast flowing with big riffles, slow flowing with mostly matting with small discontinuities. Do I have that right?

Most of my gold was caught in the first bit of ribbed matting, mostly due to lack of water flow. I think I can easily swap parts out to create a mostly matting style of sluice.

The gaps at the side ... hmm. I need to sort those out...

I love to Turon! So peaceful!

hey Wolf, yeah I think if you can open those riffles up with some more angle you will find it should clear faster. Don't hesitate to make a little dam with rocks to push a bit more water into the sluice, just open it back up after you have left.

I have a handful of sluices I use, some are the classic design of v-mat or carpet under miner's moss and expanded mesh, a couple are mat only. I have Gold Hog mats in one I think its a mix of UR, Talon, Razorback and Scrubber and also a Gold Rat with Dream Mat, both those sluices like plenty of water flow, so it's not always a slow flow = mat only option

I have never really liked super upright riffles, I think they blow gold out, Clarkson being the exception, although a bit fiddly to get set up spot on (angle vs height vs spacing) and they need high water flow. I see almost 90 flat bar riffles in some sluices and bankers and wonder how much gold they blow out the ends.

I like Hungarian riffles over simple flat bar at 45 (especially if it's in a manufactured sluice, I find it to be cheap and lazy) they don't need as much water flow and do capture well, but its a bit like Ford vs Holden, Minelab vs Garrett.

The Turon is about my favorite place in the world really, I'd be happy to live in one of those new tiny houses you see all over the internet these days and just move up and down that river forever lol.

Good luck mate, hope to see you out there. Let's hope we see some sun next weekend. Shoot me a pm if you wanna meet up sometime.

A catchup would be good! The spot my son and I were in on Sunday was pretty nice - saw massive fish in the water (assuming Carp - I reckon 80cm long), 5 piglets wandered out of the bush at us (which we scared away just in case their mum showed up), saw some old water races, and of course got some gold! My son had gold fever bad - the old "one more bucket" had us leaving later than expected, but so worthwhile.

Well the sluice is working by the looks, nice to see some gold at the end of the day. Be interesting to see you double that with some adjustments and fine-tuning.

Hehe I know what it's like "one more bucket". Last time we got out the missus and I were on some sparse gold then she found a really nice concentration right at the end of the day, we ran 2x 20l buckets classified down, and the gold was really good. By now we were losing light but she's such a trooper she said let's just do 2 more buckets! or even just classify 2 and take them home to pan out hehe.

Those last 4 buckets sure turned the day around.

Hehe at 80cm long they were surely mud gudger carp, I used to actually eat them as a kid. I caught them and then put them in holding tanks for about a week with fresh water mussels filtering the water until it was crystal clear. They are ok once you get the mud out, not as good to eat as Redfin though.

Just found this one yesterday at Linton. Linton still produces some occasional nuggets. ..............alex

very nice speci.... linton sure copped a hiding over the past few years good to see some bits still coming out

Hey AussieChris - I modified my light sabre! Im not saying my training is complete or Im full Jedi just yet, but the results from the same spot showed a lot more finer material.



As a bad scientist, I changed two things at once. I lowered the riffle angle, and I swapped out the first section of Bunnings moss for v mat.



Not bad results. Next step is to move away from crevicing and hunt for a pay streak somewhere... #thenextlevel

Thanks for your advice!!!

Cheers,
Mike

Nice results Mike, looks spot on now mate. Great having gold in your pan at the end of the day, now to work on filling one of those 1oz vials, 31.1 grams, seems like impossible when you get started, but you get a few days when you are right on it and have over a gram in your pan.....it adds up quick.

0.07gms from approx 25-30L of dirt...i'm liking this ground!

Got a little more yesterday from about 6 small buckets. The little spot that was giving up her gold was where I had my daughter dig for worms (she was fishing) - I said dig there for some worms and chuck the dirt into the bucket for me. Winner!

This was along the upper Turon not far from the 2nd camping ground. Had a good chat with a local who was fishing with his kids - interestingly he told me that theyd changed the rules on crown land and now farmers own to the middle of the river. Im not sure this sounds right to me - I checked online and when I toggled crown land on and off, the Turon definitely changes colour. The only fences I can see are trying to keep stock out of the Turon, also indicating that this is BS. Thoughts?

First of all....that's nice gold! was it wet up there? I wanted to go out but was raining all morning in Lithgow go figure, by the time it cleared the day was pretty much dusted.

Second, just sounds like scare tactics to me, a good way of keeping people out. I guess it's understandable as not everyone would be a welcome visitor.

In most cases, especially with larger rivers, the bed of the water body and the majority of its bank up to the mean high water mark is governed by the Crown Lands Act. This makes it land owned by the government and therefore often accessible to the general public as long as they do not use private land to access the water.

There are a very limited number of streams where very old freeholds, ownership/lease of land can extend to the centre of the waterway, but from all accounts, The Turon is not one of them.

http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/ check all the lot labels, lot boundaries and you can see where boundaries roughly extend to.

Maybe if possible speak to landowners, let them know you are doing the right thing in regards to the waterway, most people are pretty good once they can speak face to face with each other.

Just don't use private property to access the river, keep within the high water mark, just do the right thing, you should be good.

Not a word spoken but the rewards of an adventure truely represented in a single image

Nice pan MK12 :Y:

this is from the dpi site. hope it helps.

BC top info :Y: .