⭐ Alluvial Show n Tell

[navieko]

I took my new Walbanker out for it's maiden voyage, just to a spot I've found a long the Barron river (FNQ), only 10 minutes walk from my backyard if you can believe it! I made a little video up using some of the footage and pics I had taken with my phone - pretty crappy quality and this video editing is still new to me, but here it is anyway!

[video=480,360]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR5yv1CvAa4[/video]

Cheers

 

[Reeks]

Navieko.. I am jealous. That is all.
Flake? C'mon it's a flat nugget fella
Well done mate.

 

[G0lddigg@]

nice nugget there mate, that clay it the balls mate that5s exactly what i look for around creeks, its like gold glue. Did you take the time to buts all your clay up before feeding it into your banker?

 

[navieko]

Thank guys. This area in general isn't known for it's gold so I was pretty stoked to find this spot in my backyard to boot... and I'm sure many more like it a long the Barron.

G0lddigg@, to be honest we didn't go to much extra lengths to break the dense clay up before shoveling it in the banker, but I did find as it had been soaking in the water for a pretty long time in the hole, it wasn't too bad and the spray bar (as well as the aid of our hands to grind it together against the rocks and grate) broke it up pretty good. The majority of the material though was that really dark decomposing slate/bedrock, mixed in with some clay and gravel.... it just came apart really easily with the aide of the pry bar and shovel, and very easy to get big shovel loads of it at a time.

Still plenty of material there anyhow, just gotta do some more prep work to make the pay dirt accessible.... some back breaking work to get those giant rocks outta the way so that I can expand the hole some more!

Cheers

 

[G0lddigg@]

Thank guys. This area in general isn't known for it's gold so I was pretty stoked to find this spot in my backyard to boot... and I'm sure many more like it a long the Barron.

G0lddigg@, to be honest we didn't go to much extra lengths to break the dense clay up before shoveling it in the banker, but I did find as it had been soaking in the water for a pretty long time in the hole, it wasn't too bad and the spray bar (as well as the aid of our hands to grind it together against the rocks and grate) broke it up pretty good. The majority of the material though was that really dark decomposing slate/bedrock, mixed in with some clay and gravel.... it just came apart really easily with the aide of the pry bar and shovel, and very easy to get big shovel loads of it at a time.

Still plenty of material there anyhow, just gotta do some more prep work to make the pay dirt accessible.... some back breaking work to get those giant rocks outta the way so that I can expand the hole some more!

Cheers

well you've proved there's gold there now i'm so happy for you. Mate the clay you just described is exactly where i usually find the majority of my gold. Decomposed slate is or was at some point clay and or volcanic ash its the perfect protector of nuggets .

Just for fun try filling a bucket just with the clay put water in it and some cause gravels and scrub the hell out of it, top up with fresh water and let it sit over night. pan that sucker out and compare your results to the average you put throught the banker. I think you might be surprised at how much course gold can end up in that blue stuff. good luck mate super jealous of your backyard.

 

[navieko]

Will do mate, appreciate the advice! We're just getting into the wet season here and it probably won't take long before the river comes up and fills the hole back in so will try and head back down there as much as I can over the next few days and see what I can learn!

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Good work Navieko, plenty of spots with gold up this way, you just have to move the 20 ton boulders or wait for the wet to move em for you. Trouble is, the gold mives also!.

 

[Outlander51]

Awesome stuff Navieko. I hit one of natures riffles on the weekend and found lots of that blued composing slate. But now I'm kicking myself because I forgot to pick it up at the end of the day... Bit skeptical though how this slate could have gold in it since it's rock or was once rock??

 

[navieko]

Awesome stuff Navieko. I hit one of natures riffles on the weekend and found lots of that blued composing slate. But now I'm kicking myself because I forgot to pick it up at the end of the day... Bit skeptical though how this slate could have gold in it since it's rock or was once rock??

Cheers Myles. I can't say I know exactly what the process is - maybe it was once clay that turned to rock, and then it breaks down over time and the process starts anew - but I can say that the dark blue decomposing slate material probably had the most consistent amounts of gold in it compared to the other types of materials I tested with the pan. Don't know if it'll always be the case, but next time you see it - go for it, I'd be very interested in hearing if it's a consistent thing all around!

In the hole I dug, I probably went down about 60-70cm of various layers of large boulders, sand, gravel, mud, and solid slate which I had to pry out before I got to this decomposing slatey mud.

 

[G0lddigg@]

Awesome stuff Navieko. I hit one of natures riffles on the weekend and found lots of that blued composing slate. But now I'm kicking myself because I forgot to pick it up at the end of the day... Bit skeptical though how this slate could have gold in it since it's rock or was once rock??

hey Miles its not always the case its hit and miss but in my area at least i find that the slate that has lots of cracks will hold water and become muddy overtime, ive seen this myself in that ive cleaned a crevis back to nice flat rock then come back 8 months later and brushed it to find lots if thin crack inside that open up and i always get good gold out of these (in the areas i work anyway) I read somewhere that slate will open and close with varied pressure/moisture conditions causing material to be confined within the rock. more often than not when busting it open i find that there are convergent masses that slot into each other, once you break the airlock in the mud around it often these little shelves appear and the stuff caught underneath is heaven(blue clay).

Think lots and lots of little riffles catching gold for millions of years

here's an example this was under water about 4 weeks ago now its dry and the cracks are starting to appear, i got 20 colours out of that pan and I only scraped a tiny bit of blue clay

 

[Outlander51]

Hey Guys, that's definitely the blue stuff I've got at the bottom of one of my crevices. What first appears to be bedrock, I push on it a little and it crumbles off in sheets and is sticky blue. Now I'm super amped to get back a retrieve it. I won't be back for a couple of weeks but I'll let you know how it pans out (no pun intended).

In the meantime I have just returned from a day at my favorite set of riffles. I got good gold once again totaling 0.92 grams for just on 4 hours work. I'm now down on bedrock and its about 3.5 feet deep. The gold seems to be occurring from 1 foot to 2.5 feet in depth and I'm digging further and further out from the rock which caused the gold to deposit. Between the bedrock and the 2.5 foot depth level I am finding this clumped material which could only be described as quartz wash - in a handful there are hundreds of tiny buckshot pieces of quartz mixed with dark black sediment. Its easy enough to break apart in my hand or on the Walbanker tray but I'm just not sure if its got gold in it. I'm running it all anyway as I need to go through it to continue following the bedrock.

What's more interesting is that towards the end of the day I think I found a sub crevice on the bedrock. I dug as much of it as I could but its mostly under the overburden that hasn't been moved yet (you can see where I'm talking about in the pictures - far left of the pool) and with the light mostly gone I only got about half a foot down. The bedrock falls off very steeply into it. I haven't found its bottom nor have I discovered if it's actually a crevice or just a step down in the bedrock. I hope its a crevice. Dam, I hope its a crevice....

 

[G0lddigg@]

Looking good mate what a ripper spot to hang out

 

[navieko]

Looking real promising there Myles!

What I've tried to do in my hole is empty out the water as best I can and take samples of the different types of material to pan separately, just so I know which sort of material to watch out for and how best to expand the hole, etc. A lot of what you describe reminds me of my hole though - makes me wanna rush back to my spot and see what else I can dig up!

...Unfortunately though the weather up here is getting a bit too chaotic for prospecting at the moment, so it'll have to wait... I just hope I don't go back to find a huge boulder in there.

 

[Outlander51]

I know what your saying Navieko - strip mining essentially. Some very helpful members recommended that to me some time ago and that's what I've tried to do, peel the material back in layers, see what I've got, find out where the golds occurring most. What I've found is that strip mining or sampling is quite hard in my location due to the abundance of boulders. I can barely penetrate the ground attacking it from the top but if I go at it from the side from within the hole I've already dug I have water on my side and gravity too. But the downside is my layers then get mixed as the walls crumble but it don't matter!! I enjoy scooping every bit to find the gold and at the end of the day I want only clean bedrock left so it's all got to be moved anyway. PS Navieko, I had a go in the Barron river last October when I was in Cairns but had no luck. Geez I thought I had a lot of boulders in my area but your backyard makes mine look like pebbles.

 

[navieko]

I hear ya Myles, it's the same deal with my location... best I can do is empty out water as best I can and then clean out all the mixed loose material from the hole and then try and look for the pockets of different materials... but I guess at the end of the day we'll be cleaning it all out anyhow so doesn't really matter. I'm still trying to psyche myself up for having to move a few massive boulders in order to expand... gonna be fun! I just hope my backs up to it.

 

[gudachi]

from middleton creek flora and fauna reserve south of castlemaine a few years back

 

[G0lddigg@]

very nice gudachi Ive had a mate hastling me to get down there with the highbanker for over a year but he hasn't produced any decent samples yet, good to know there's some colour in there.

 

[Rambling rude]

Hey GOlddigg, see those flat looking larger pieces in that pile of gold..I have picked up some of those in that same gully with the test holes I found a few months back.(referr topic digging like the old timers).
I have HB in the Middleton cr and it has been a hit and miss sort of place and difficult to
get down to the water if there is any
RR

 

[G0lddigg@]

ok so sounds like it worth a look then, might take a rubbish bin and some water and have a poke around one weekend. only problem this time of year is the march flies ...

 

[jenmal]

Our Gold!