Back in the day!!!

Prospecting Australia

Help Support Prospecting Australia:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Great couple of clips there Simmo, what a prospecting weapon a drone can be.

"Back in the Day" (1970's) mate and I were full time sluicing on a creek system in NSW. We had an old petrol/kero Fordson bucket loader, the death trap one where a pull on the lever dropped the full bucket in one hit. Our pump was a 3x2" on a Lister diesel with 3" canvas hose.

An old timer reckoned our 20 odd feet of sluice (timber boxed) was too short, too steep, riffles set up wrong and missing gold. With his "know how" we extended it to 60' and cut pieces of coir (coconut fibre) matting to fit the last 20'or so. We also left the first 6 or so feet of the sluice open, one bloke to feed the front hopper, other with a sluice fork to lift the larger pebbles out and also agitate the initial flow.

Recovery improved out of sight and every 2-3 weeks we replaced the coir mats, dry them in the sun then burn the gold out (kero assisted!).

"Pennyweight" ground became "2dwt." the quantity of flour gold caught was the bonus, but impossible to wash it out.
mike
 
Top