A good day

[Young Simmo]

OK, I am brand new in here, but have been doing it for quite a while and thought I might chuck a couple of mine into the mix. The biggest is from the Mainland about 15Kms south of Cue and the Elf's Booty, I found just behind the 9 hole at the Cue golf course.

 

[Heatho]

Very nice nuggets Young Simmo, makes a newbie like me drool.

 

[Syndyne]

Wow! Absolute beauties Simmo. The 2200 has more than earned it's stripes there.

Very nice work.
Cheers,
Shauno.

 

[pilbarachad]

Nice finds there mate- i can just imagine a heap of detector holes now appearing around the 9th hole of the cue golfcourse

Are they recent finds- or from a while ago?

 

[Willo]

Simmo - they are fantastic finds thanks for sharing, hope you are still getting some big ones out there! Willo

 

[gcause]

Welcome to the forum Simmo.

Maybe its your camera or my computer screen but they just don't look right, the colour is off have they been cleaned with acid or something as there appears to be no mineral intrusion. I haven't been to WA so I don't know if WA gold looks different to Qld gold.

Im only a newbie at this but I would have thought a 5.5oz nugget would look way bigger than the 2.1oz but they appear in the photo to have roughly about the same surface area.

They are very rough nuggets so it would have to be close to the source of the reef. And on a golf course of all places, it must have been down a long way as they build up the holes with a tonne of overburden to level them out.

Can you give us a close up of these nuggets? That first one looks like a bit like a sheep, a rams head.

 

[Young Simmo]

gcause, boy what a pessimistic comment. I can assure you they are real and dinkum, and I found them during what seems like a million hours of trudging through the bush. You obviously have found a lot of gold and am an expert, so I won't dispute you comments. No I can not give you a close up photo as I sold the last of my gold on the American E-Bay for excellent prices, the Yanks just love West Australian Gold Nuggets. You mention the colour well, I found these nuggets in the Cue area. From Oct 1989 to Feb 1992 I ran a Gold Heap Leach operation for Son's Of Gw

 

[Young Simmo]

Boy, not sure what happened there but my post suddenly posted while I was typing so I will continue.
From Oct 1989 to Feb 1992 I ran a Gold Heap Leach operation for Son's Of Gwalia mining, it was a 2 year project with a budget production of 14,000 ounces. It was 7 Kms south of Cue and I produced 15,530 ounces and the overall average grade reported from the Perth Mint was 99.5% pure gold . I can guarantee you everything I said originally, is 100% correct.
PROVE ME WRONG.

 

[Young Simmo]

gcause, In addition to my last comments, I didn't find it in the 9 hole, it was probably 20 or 30 metres away, catch on mate?

 

[gcause]

Simmo, please re-read my post, I think you are reading way to much into it, forum posts and e-mails are a poor communication tool they can't convey what the sender was expressing or feeling when they wrote it.

I meant no disrespect and if it came across that way I apologise.

I advised you that I am a newbie at gold prospecting. I was making some enquiries so as to learn more about the nature of WA gold as I would like to visit the goldfields there one day.

I make no claims of expertise whatsoever I learn something new everyday which is what I like about this forum.

What intrigued me about your finds was the size of the nuggets and the colour as I said they didn't look like what I was used to seeing here in Qld.

The gold we see in Qld has a lot of ironstone and quartz in it so I haven't seen clean nuggets like those before. I have heard that people use acid to clean the gold and was wondering if that affects the colour of the gold. Hence my question did you clean these in acid.

The size of the 5.5oz nugget didn't compare to what I had seen before for the number of ounces and seemed to have a similar surface area to the 2.2oz nugget so I asked if we could see a closeup of it.

Here is what I mean by that the gold nugget in the centre of this picture came from Cue also and weighed in just under 6 ounces:

>I found just behind the 9 hole at the Cue golf course.

I was just expressing surprise at the location of the find given the amount of overburden they put into golf courses.

As I said Welcome to the forum Simmo and apologies for upsetting you it was unintended.

 

[Young Simmo]

gcause, no worries mate, probably most of us 74 year olds get a bit touchy. Having said that both of those in the photo are dinkum nuggets, and the general quality of gold found around Cue is really high. Therefore 99% pure will always be smaller than 80% stuff.
Cheers mate.

 

[Young Simmo]

gcause, re your question about acid cleaning of nuggets, yes you can, BUT. Years ago it was a simple matter to buy Hydrofluric acid to do the job. But after a bloke I think in South Aust killed himself with the stuff, you now have to have a licence or certificate to be able to buy it. I used to have easy access to it, because in my job I had to clean the companies gold bars I poured before I sent them down to the Perth Mint.

 

[Coyote]

I used to use Nitric acid to clean bars up in the gold room. lower quality bars to your stuff though. used to assay ~80%au with the remainder being mostly ag with small amounts of base metal thrown in.

Hydrofluric is nasty stuff

Anyway welcome to the forum. I might have to throw my detector in the golf bag in future . I was going to head over to Cue in about a months time but some unexpected costs have blown that trip away.

Cheers

Cliff

 

[Young Simmo]

OK Coyote, I will cover for you as we are heading over to Cue next week for maybe 2 weeks. I have just received my new Fisher Gold Bug Pro DP with 11" DD, and 5 " Mono coils, and need to get out and learn how to drive it. I was a detecting freak from 1978 to 2000 then moved over to the coast. Now after 14 - 15 years I have got the bug back again. Watch this space as it could be Champagne or Tears.