dry blower heaps

[stoneage]

I've found a run of dry blower heaps along an old gully/creek. Found a couple of small ones 1.5g total
Some of the piles are all larger gravel and some seem to be finer and have a lot more soil in them.
What would cause this and has either one got more potential to yield a nugget?
Also is it worth while and is it considered ok to dig up and spread out these heaps to got right through them?
Would appreciate peoples opinions.

 

[kurrajong]

The piles are of different sizes because they have been classified with different size sieves.
Speccies are often found in the piles of larger stuff as the oldtimers only eyeballed them.
Here in WA those heaps are often pushed off with dozers and then detected.
I have had a fair bit of success in those areas and always check the banks around tree roots as well as the creek itself.
Rubbish in the creek will be a pain but the effort is usually well rewarded. A magnet on the bottom of the pick is your friend in these areas.

Happy hunting

 

[grubstake]

Could some of the heaps have been reworked later (perhaps during the 1930's Depression), when there was some water available? I've seen something like this in WA, where the original heaps had some detectable nuggets, but the reworked ones were clean as a whistle.

 

[stoneage]

Thanks guys,
would love to get a bulldozer in!! but I'll have to stick with a shovel.
Kurrajong do you ever get larger nuggets/species or is it all small stuff in these areas?

 

[kurrajong]

One area I worked late last year had lots of little speccies, quite a few small nuggets (up to 1 grammers) and the thing that kept me going was I found a lot of scraps of sieve mesh. I figured that the oldtimers had dodgy gear and that they would have missed some. I use a rake to pull the piles down, particularly the bigger stuff. It spreads better than with a shovel and it is easier to keep the digholes a little less obvious.
Same area produced a speccie with 11.5 grams after smashing and panning. It was in the tree roots on the edge of the creek and was very mellow to start with.
Slow work and a lot of rubbish to deal with, but that is what I look for as I have the patience to deal with it, most of the time.

 

[Nightjar]

We did VERY well back in the early 90's using shovel fed small dry blowers. When we found old dry blowing patches we put all the mounds back through including the top 6" under the mounds.
This was quite often virgin ground and it wasn't unusual to get nuggets in the top screen. (5/10g)

 

[stoneage]

thanks for the tips, found a couple more small ones. also one in the bed of a surfacing area higher up the hill.

 

[Randolph]

Back in the 70s we found some of the original dry blowing mounds out from mount magnet WA. They were a small mound about 18 inches high with the dish [indentation on the ground] where they had been digging. Due to the method of dryblowing a lot of pieces would fall onto the mounds. We had quite a bit of success detecting on and around these patches. The more mounds usually indicated the richer the area. Cheers Randolph