- Joined
- Nov 10, 2017
- Messages
- 38
- Reaction score
- 30
Why is the gold in oz so shallow?
I am in alaska and the gold is deep
I am in alaska and the gold is deep
Sourdough Moe said:Why is the gold in oz so shallow?
I am in alaska and the gold is deep
I looked into this and found that the "largest" nugget size issue is largely mythology, although we might win on number - comparable size nuggets have been found in the Urals and California. Also lumps attached to quartz were commonly termed "specimens" and are commonly excluded from comparison with "nuggets" which helps the Welcome Strangers image (in fact the discoverers trimmed something like 52 lb of quartz off the Welcome Stranger - I think Holtermanns nugget at Hill End NSW was nearly 80% larger even after they broke it up to get it up the shaft). "Richest" depends on whether one means amount of gold or grade of ore. At one time Bendigo was the largest Australian production and Bendigo second (and 11th largest in the world). These figures were true in about 1980 but they have long been overtaken. but what the hell, we love icons and who worries too much about facts ;-). The highest grade mines in Australia last quarter were Fosterville and Costerfield, both in Victoria.oldtimerROB said:The richest goldfields in Australia were argueably Ballarat and Bendigo. Ballarat had Bakery Hill where the Welcome nugget (2217 ozs) in 1858 was found at 180 feet depth.Then the biggest nugget ever found and 99.5% pure. There were lots of shallow gullies and Kitty,s Lead was the richest with very large and frequent nuggets from 6 inches to 6 feet depth. The deep leads kept the miners occupied for wages by the companies which were floated and listed on the Melbourne and London stock Exchanges. Some these companies were still operating 30 years after the initial discovery.It is estimated they only got half of the gold in the deeper leads due to flooding. My house is sitting on top of the Sebastopol Lead and I only need to dig a shaft in my back yard if I was young enough. I remember going to Maryborough in 1958 in a Ford Prefect and along the High Street there was lots of mines still operating with huge mullock heaps everywhere. My step father worked at the Wattle Gully Mine in Chewton as a blaster and after heavy rains would hop on his bicycle and go panning in the gullies.
It is interesting that this is not strictly true, something geologists have only realised in the last couple of decades. Most Australian placer gold was not produced from modern streams but from older, buried valley gravels (not just the "deep leads", deeper than 30 m, but most of the shallow leads as well). When most Australian gold placers were formed all of southern and central Australia was quite wet - trees grew as far north as Broken Hill that are now largely confined to Tasmania (logs and leaves of them are found with the gold). Crocodiles swam in northern South Australia. In now-dry outback areas the factor was probably more lack of topographic relief than amount of water (most of that latest drying has been since humans were on Earth, central Australia had roaring rivers). You can see some evidence of this at Lake Mungo in NSW, now a dry salt lake, where there are huge middens of shells and fish bones from 45,000 years ago when Mungo Man and his mates lived there in wet comfort.Goldchaser1 said:Sourdough Moe said:Why is the gold in oz so shallow?
I am in alaska and the gold is deep
You have massive amounts of water compared to us sourdough,yours is well sorted,our gold in arid or outback areas mostly hasnt travelled too far,water action is the difference,id love to get to alaska one day,looks awsome!
It still is rich and producing gold....oldtimerROB said:As a boy I was enthralled by the exploits of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who was commissioned by the Bolivian government in 1906 to survey and delineate the boundaries of Bolivia which were then not fixed. He was tasked also to explore for gold,silver and diamond deposits in the Bolivian Andes and also to do surveys and cost estimates for possible routes of railway lines. He was in later life always looking for the lost city of Eldorado in the Brazilian jungle after reading an eye witness account of the Spanish Conquistadors who had seen it and described its roofs of gold glistening in the sun.He and his two sons were killed in the Xingu area of Brazil by hostile Indians.He was a romantic adventurer and my boyhood hero.So is it the quest and the journey in the search for gold or the gold itself that is more important? It is a riddle which may never be solved as a man fired up with the spirit of adventure is already rich beyond measure.Who knows how much gold and large nuggets were found in the Andes and it was a very rich source of gold and silver judging by how many Spanish galleons were transporting it back to Spain.Also Emeralds,rubies and diamonds were found.It could have been so rich as to rival the Victorian goldfields found a few hundred years later.
Enter your email address to join: