Oallen ford

Hi everyone. Nice to join. Some info about me
Have 4x4 truck and 20tn excavator
500+ acres near the ford with 3klms of river frontage. Heaps of shafts and kilometres of the water race and old wash out spots on it.
We use it to relax with kids and have been thinking because Im a tradie that during wet days am keen as to chase some gold through the old shafts or wash zones or rapids in river
I have no idea what is the way to go?
What do you recon?
Been looking at some wash plants with trommel up to around $25k but dont think I need trommel if I have a sift bucket or grizzly shaker. Whats the best bet a few long sluices and centrifugal?
Any opinions would help
Thank you

Welcome A#79--Good luck.

WelcomeA#79 you will need to comply with nsw laws even on private land , most equipment you mentioned is illegal in nsw , there may be licenses available but im not educated on that side. Non mechanical digging and processing is fine to use , if you are full on new to gold start small , a pan and seives and then a river sluice will be the best start as testing the ground for the sweetest spots is the only way to not go broke if planning to go large scale.
Plenty of us do day trips to the forde , so sing out some time for a meet up and chat about the best plan of attack, or just use the search icon to look through the site , theres plenty on nsw laws and the oallen area.

I think you need to dig a good DEEP dam on your property.....

Yeah thought that was the situation. Putting in some fencing near some old shafts and thought Id tickle them. Would be great to meet someone near there. Been reading up historical internet info and thought the old timers wouldnt dig by hand the shafts without a result. Is it worthwhile going through the spill from the water race or chase the shafts a bit?

When you get 10 posts up private message me and i will pass on my phone number and we can chat
i live about 40 min away and could come out and help
Maybe even run the detector over it

I can vouch for marksman , he is honest enough for what you need, you will need to check people out before giving out invitations or exact locations , gold does funny things to peoples ethics.
You can search through anyones history of posts on the forum and it does give a gauge of character and ethics.

Im only guessing you are new to gold , dont invest to big to quick , 98% of people chasing gold in nsw dont recover enough gold to cover their food and feul bill for the day.
Start small , you can process a square meter of material by hand over a small sluice in a day. Then you can scale the maths up to work out costs versus return.

I did have it worked out a few years ago but cant think where to look for those notes, the gold shows on tv in alaska are on the same scale as rich ground around here, but rich ground here may only be a foot wide by 6 foot long.

For a rough example,
They were after a ounce a hour and they said how many scoops they were doing per minute ,maybe 2 and maybe they were half a meter of material each, so thats 60 cubic meters per hour,
28.35 grams per ounce,
So thats 0.47 grams per cubic meter of material.
So roughly $45 per cubi meter,
So you need 555 cubic meters to cover a $25,000 wash plant without running costs.

That maths is rough and maybe wrong , had a few beers

There are great recovery sluices that classify the material and some very good matts to capture the flour gold that region is known for.
Goldratt is worth googling and i can highly recommend their products.

High bankers were the best and quickest but NSW banned them 3 or so years ago.

There is some good points above , to add to it , oallen has super fine gold , and lots of it has been hammered flat so its easy to lose it out a sluice if its not set up right.

There were huge gold dredges set up there in 1890 - 1911 or so and i think they all went broke.

They had a capture rate in their sluices of 4 - 6 %

Yes you read that correctly , they lost 94 - 96 % of the gold that got smashed straight out the end of the sluice.

As they say , start out small , keep an accurate map of your property and keep a record of what you find and where , how deep etc.

When you get up to 10 posts you can post photos , love to see some of the shafts on your property.

good luck , have fun and stay safe.

Get an experienced geologist to run his eye over your property?

Welcome to the forum A#79. Just be careful when asking for help, as soon as gold is mentioned you will get everyone trying to get in on the act. Vet them and get any agreements on paper.

Enjoy your new hobby. :Y:

Cheers

Doug

Just for the record for everyone on here and for you
i am not interested in any percentage of anything found i do not need the money i do this for the fun of the find and being out in the field
i am only offering my help if you want it.
I have all the gear to do some testing and am only willing to help a fellow prospector

Thanks and appreciate feedback
So apart from initially doing a few geological tests

what do you think is normally worth chasing?
- shafts
- old washout zones
- panning at the rapids

I have cut a few roads in for access. Is it worthwhile putting a detector over those areas as well. Do you get nuggets from flake gold areas?

Happy for someone else to do it as long as they give me a few pointers

I would think it would be worth running the detector over the roads and anywhere else that looks promising
Always run a few pans out of the river

A#79 said:

Thanks and appreciate feedback
So apart from initially doing a few geological tests

what do you think is normally worth chasing?
- shafts
- old washout zones
- panning at the rapids

I have cut a few roads in for access. Is it worthwhile putting a detector over those areas as well. Do you get nuggets from flake gold areas?

Happy for someone else to do it as long as they give me a few pointers

Click to expand...

Definitely worth checking with the beeping stick.

I have found small chunky crystalline gold in my sluice (5mm long x 3 mm wide) at Oallen but its rare , mostly its small or flakey flat stuff

I was told 5 years ago a guy got an 11 gram nugget near the crossing but didnt see it myself.

A few kilometres upstream near treelight there was from memory a 90 ounce and 35 ounce nugget taken from a hillside above the Shoalhaven , this was in a newspaper article dated after 1900.

A 240 ounce nugget was found at Nerriga and many large nuggets from the Shoalhaven / Mongarlowe intersect although these get smashed in size as they go downstream.

Where you are the gravels can be 6 - 14 metres deep and if you took a little time to dig right down to the bottom you would certainly find chunky nuggs but most of us cant knock out a hole that deep before smoko , in fact it takes me a whole day to get a hole 2 metres deep let alone 14 metres and that would require shoring for safety.

erfect:

If I were you. I would take Marksman up on his offer
If at least at the end of the day you end up with some invaluable knowledge
Then like everyone else put that knowledge to work yourself
Gold is not easy to find. If it was there would be none left.
You are in a good situation with gold bearing land and someone to give
you a few pointers.
Good luck 79

Nuggets will be very rare but not impossible in that area, if it was me I would be looking for shallow areas of ancient river wash , so your "wash out " areas would be my starting point in hope they were sluiced and not just natural erosion.
Ancient river wash is easily identified by finding patches of river worn stones , basically if you can find gravels that match what's in the river but up on the hill on the edge of their diggings that would be the paydirt they were into.
Are there any mounds near the shafts ? They are a great clue to what they were chasing.

I imagine their shafts would on be 2 or 3 meters deep in that area ?
Be super careful and have a buddy up top if you enter a shaft , if it's more than 3m don't go in without expert opinion as one rock can cause the whole side to slip in.
Are the shafts on lower ground in the area of the river ? Or way up on the hill ?
I have some books on that area and back towards bungonia and most the big shafts were for other minerals like tin.

Panning at the rapids should be the easiest way to get gold, just find a nice solid rock on a inside bend and work the material against the downstream side of it.

Sorry for delayed reply been busy at work.

The shafts are around 40m up away from the river probably 20-40m in elevation up. Heaps of mounds on multiple shafts and sites on property.

Love to have a look at some of the books Aussie farmer.

We have old ruins on property too. The old chimneys always last.

Mabey they were chasing tin. I think an old timer from near there said the shafts were up to 30m deep.

As mentioned before any help is appreciated and happy to get contacts after the 10 posts are up.

Its a bit cold at this time of year to look in rapids if you want to go for a swim in summer give me a yell.

Hi A#79,

There's a document available online that's been posted on the forum before that you might be interest in titled "Aspects of Gold Mining and Mining Communities in the Shoalhaven Area of New South Wales: An Archaeological and Historical Study" outlining archeological gold history of the spring creek area.

After reading the document myself and recently visiting the Nerriga area I naively thought I might be able to visit some of these old sites before quickly realising the area (e.g. McKane Rd) is fenced off or, like nearby mines sites on crown land, locked up pretty tight.

Seems like a fascinating area, you'll no doubt have a great time exploring :Y: