Walhalla area Victoria information and questions

Like a few others who live nearby, I also have visited the area a few times over the years. The first time was camping in the old Coopers Creek pub in the late 50's when it was a disused building. My parents were in attendance when it lost or handed in its license in the 50's. I believe it burnt down some years ago.

It is an area that I intend to revisit within the next few weeks with the son in-law, now that I have a detector, to check out a few places and have a scratch around.

Just got back from an exiting weekend, decided to give Coopers Creek and Bruntons Bridge a miss as I realized on Friday it was school holidays and we wanted to camp on our own and avoid the crowds.
Checked over my maps and decided to try a new location away from the traffic and glad we did, even though is was further to drive on a short weekend.
After and early start we arrived at the location midday Saturday (yesterday) and set up camp, after lunch I went down to the creek and found a likely looking spot to try my first ever pan, tried crevassing around a couple of rocks and on my 3rd pan got my first speck, next pan another speck, after a couple of hours, 20 odd pans, 5 spec's and a sore back I decided it was beer O'clock.

We were over the moon to think we backed our judgment for the location of our first ever prospect and actually found 5 spec's in a couple of hours.
Thanks to everyone on this forum for the valuable information and lessons to be learnt through weeks of reading posts and watching your various video's, it really pointed us in the right direction for what we wanted to do.

This morning I took Molly our little Jack Russel puppy for a good walk up a track and came across a lot of quartz veins running through shaeling(?) rock confined to a smallish area of 50 meters or so across, the surface area up the hill has scattered quartz pieces everywhere but only above the quartz vein section, I ran back to camp and grabbed the camera and headed back up to get some pic's. I've taken dozens of photo's and even brought a bucket of samples home to sample. The general area was a gold mining area in the mid to late 1800's so I've posted some pic's and wondering if they are worth pursuing, the rock is quite loose and a pick would make very light work of it to extract from what I can see.
The area is upstream from where I panned so I figger if there's small spec's in one tiny section of the creek then I will probably need to do a few more trips up there to investigate further.
I've also decided that a couple of good sieves and a river sluice will save my back and be a good investment.

Bruntons Bridge and Coopers Creek might have to wait a little longer for a quiet time to visit, mid week and out of school holidays.

Trace found a new way to christen her pan.......hmmm.

The tiny sample area.

Only sampled just above and below the rock crevice, there are a lot of bedrock locations around here that would be great when the water is lower in summer.

The tiny 5 spec's, actually had trouble with 2 of them as they were so small.

A couple of the quartz vein pic's, there would have been about 20 - 25 similar veins in this small area.

3 small samples of what was laying just below these veins, there were plenty of quartz samples with pinks, orange, dark green, honeycomb and small crystals in them, quite a varied sample rate.

On the way home today I was on the lookout for future spots to sample and there are plenty of spots in the creek worth crevicing when the water is lower.

We stumbled on this spot but unfortunately it's in an exempt location, saw plenty more large quartz veins through bedrock in a creek that was exempt but that's the way it goes I suppose.

Congratulations on your first gold. Unfortunately there is no cure for the gold fever. :lol:
Nice spot. You should get back there with a sluice.

That's a cracker of a pic that last one. Looks like you had a great time in a beautiful part of the country. Hope a sluice works out well for you in the future

Cheers

Think you will find most of the quartz Barron of any gold, but you can sometimes find gold in quartz in the river and creeks
There is lots of quartz veins throughout the area, but only 1 in 100 will have gold in them
The area was well and truly look over in the 1880s
And by 1910 there was no trees within 20km of Walhalla
All but a few are still young trees compared to other parts of the bush

Nice find, you will always remember where you found your first gold
Great photos too, I use to love going to the area.

Great report and great photos and hey, bet dinner tasted real good after being prepared in the gold pan, improvisation at its best.
Good luck on your future trips,
Tom

Great report mate, thanks for sharing. Balx

Hahaa, goodonya Trace for knocking up the fella a feed, gotta be happy with that mate, nice pics, cool share

Looks like the 3 of you had a great time. Congratulations.

Thanks for the comments guys, dinner tasted great from the pan prep. and Trace loves to cook. Great night in the bush under the stars but glad to have a hot shower and my own bed tonight, the double swag is too squashy for both of us and the dog, especially when she hogs the middle and sprawls out.......the pup that is, not Trace, time to look for a Queen size swag.

Kane, I ended up a couple of hours drive from Walhalla and just glad I had the Hema maps 6 and rooftop maps with me as I ended up on the wrong tracks a couple of times, next time will try and allow more time to really enjoy the area.
I'll take a river sluice next time to try and get more material through and after watching some "how to pan technique" video's tonight I'll be better equipped next time.

Think I'm coming down with Gold Fever, the 5 spec's looked great yesterday afternoon but now I'm sitting here thinking how small they look and can't wait to get back out there again

When i was down there in the late 1960's, and still living at home, my mother washed all the muddy clothes in the laundry basin which was as big as a bath in those days, and in the bottom of the sink fine gold was found laying there from the "mud".
Great pics mate. The rock formations still look the same.
Jaros

Well done, the area looks lovely up that way! Congrats on your first gold, I hope you find much more in the future. Thanks for the report.

Prospector Pete, next time your up that way head nth on springs road and get into the head waters of the Aberfeldie river. It's a pretty rough track to get in there (steep as buggery and not recommended when it's wet unless you have lockers on your truck) but the small feeder creeks flowing into the Aberfeldie have some great bedrock crevices and they hold some nice yellow.
Regards
Hiluxlou

Hey thanks for that Hiluxlou and much appreciated mate, I'll definitely suss it out at some stage when I get a 3-4 day break. The 2 trips I've done up that way around Store Hut area have been short overnighters and it's just so hard to cram everything into such a short weekend.
My intensions are to really get around to as many spots up that way as I can over the next 5 years to get to know the area better for prospecting trips in the more distant future when time allows for longer stays, it's just so bloody long to drive in with how tight some tracks are, 1.5hrs in 2nd gear to drive a few K's to get away from everyone else, the trip past the Dam is the easy bit, it's when you turn off the fun begins, I nearly ran off the tracks several times doing 20kph due to the amount of stuff to look at, would love to take long service leave and spend a month or two just poking about in them mountains as it appeals to me more than the GT, my love of mountains, streams, fishing and the bush means I could happily retire up there tomorrow if money allowed.
In the meantime I'm looking at focusing on gaining some experience around the Latrobe Valley area as it's a lot closer and easy to do day trips in the area, I'll save Walhalla and to the north for when I can get 3 or more days away.

G'day ProspectorPete

Those type of quartz veins are called en echelon veins. they generally occur adjacent to a reef system but can also sometimes carry gold. They are common in the sandy rocks and the main veins are usually in the slate. One of those rocks you showed has a squiggly black mark though the quartz. Those are called stylolites and are a very good indicator of a gold bearing quartz vein. It means that there has been a change of direction of the stresses that formed the vein and material has been removed - the quartz was a lot thinker. Gold can often occur as a result along the stylolite. this is what we looked for in the Wattle Gully mine at Chewton when I worked there.

Araluen

That sample came off the side of the mountain/hill where there is 4-5 old mines near the top, it was about 70m from the creek and probably 40m in elevation to the creek which has gold present in it.
It's good to know they have some good indicators in them and although I haven't processed these particular samples yet I plan to get back up there for a better look when time permits and look for better samples if they exist.
Thanks SWright, I really appreciate your input with my posts as with everyone else's input too, so much to learn and so much fun learning it.

SWright said:

G'day ProspectorPete

Wattle Gully mine at Chewton when I worked there.

Araluen

Click to expand...

I had a good walk around that place about 15 years back. Even up what I assume was the main drive before it was bulldozed in.
Was the water inside full of arsnic? I've often wondered since why it was green.

heading to Walhalla camping with few mates this weekend, will throw the SPP in the cruiser for the journey. Any recommended arrears close by good for detecting?

cheers.

ProspectorPete still around?

apparently so, last post 29 Dec 2015 and last visit 1 jan 2016