All the posts about gold in quartz & ironstone and how to find it got me thinking about the specimens I have.
I had a bit of a think back on the places & situations I found them in and came to the conclusion that all except one (not counting the few I have found while detecting) were found either in the ore paddocks of mullock tips beside old reef workings, or on the ground where they had fallen off the dray / packhorse / wheelbarrow.
So I thought I would pass on a few of my observations regarding ways of Fossicking for specimen gold as opposed to prospecting for primary gold in quartz.
When I go out bush Im always on the lookout for the remenants of old dray or pack tracks. In the mountains up around the N,east of Vic they are a good indicator of where there might be an old mine or group of mines. They were used to transport stone to the nearest crusher which was usually situated on a permenant water source. These tracks are a good place to look for stone that has fallen of the dray or barrow & I have found several gold bearing species like this.
The next place to look is around the mullock dumps themselves. or at the portals to adits. On mullock dumps on shaft (vertical ) workings there is usually a small wall of stone built in to one side that was used to store the Ore that was later sorted and sent to the crusher. This was called the ore Paddock. If the workings were a small scale 2 man operation the ore may have been sorted & high graded so as to reduce the cost of carting and crushing at the nearest public battery. The discarded stone or that that was put aside for latter dollying can sometimes be found up next to a tree trunk near the shaft. On adits (Horizontal tunnels) try and work out where the load out chute for the dray would have been and then check around there.
The last place is on the mullock dump itself. If the reef had ill defined walls or was faulted or spurry or had a lot of ground up clay etc mixed in with it it was easy to discard ore as being worthless mullock, as when it came up in the bucket it looked pretty much like everything else. Once it sat for 50 to 100 years the weather washes the clay dirt away.
Ore isnt always white quartz. I have found some rich stone on a dump that was purple in colour. 8) another piece I picked up looked like that fungus that grows on trees that is called blackfellas bread. ( No disrespect intended) I went to give it a kick and expected it to break up but it didnt. No gold was visible until I crushed it and checked the tail.
When washing your seived crushings dont just rely on your naked eye. If your eye site is like mine has got to of late you could throw out the "hand of faith" and not see it. Some of the gold is so fine that it just looks like a yellow translucent glow on the bottom of a black pan. Purchase a good Loupe of at least 10X . When you have your crused sample washed down to a couple of spoonfuls run a magnet wrapped in a ziploc bag through the sands to take out any iron. Lastly dont forget to check your oversize sieve for gold still adhering to the stone.
Hope this helps all the budding specie fossickers.
Jethro.
I had a bit of a think back on the places & situations I found them in and came to the conclusion that all except one (not counting the few I have found while detecting) were found either in the ore paddocks of mullock tips beside old reef workings, or on the ground where they had fallen off the dray / packhorse / wheelbarrow.
So I thought I would pass on a few of my observations regarding ways of Fossicking for specimen gold as opposed to prospecting for primary gold in quartz.
When I go out bush Im always on the lookout for the remenants of old dray or pack tracks. In the mountains up around the N,east of Vic they are a good indicator of where there might be an old mine or group of mines. They were used to transport stone to the nearest crusher which was usually situated on a permenant water source. These tracks are a good place to look for stone that has fallen of the dray or barrow & I have found several gold bearing species like this.
The next place to look is around the mullock dumps themselves. or at the portals to adits. On mullock dumps on shaft (vertical ) workings there is usually a small wall of stone built in to one side that was used to store the Ore that was later sorted and sent to the crusher. This was called the ore Paddock. If the workings were a small scale 2 man operation the ore may have been sorted & high graded so as to reduce the cost of carting and crushing at the nearest public battery. The discarded stone or that that was put aside for latter dollying can sometimes be found up next to a tree trunk near the shaft. On adits (Horizontal tunnels) try and work out where the load out chute for the dray would have been and then check around there.
The last place is on the mullock dump itself. If the reef had ill defined walls or was faulted or spurry or had a lot of ground up clay etc mixed in with it it was easy to discard ore as being worthless mullock, as when it came up in the bucket it looked pretty much like everything else. Once it sat for 50 to 100 years the weather washes the clay dirt away.
Ore isnt always white quartz. I have found some rich stone on a dump that was purple in colour. 8) another piece I picked up looked like that fungus that grows on trees that is called blackfellas bread. ( No disrespect intended) I went to give it a kick and expected it to break up but it didnt. No gold was visible until I crushed it and checked the tail.
When washing your seived crushings dont just rely on your naked eye. If your eye site is like mine has got to of late you could throw out the "hand of faith" and not see it. Some of the gold is so fine that it just looks like a yellow translucent glow on the bottom of a black pan. Purchase a good Loupe of at least 10X . When you have your crused sample washed down to a couple of spoonfuls run a magnet wrapped in a ziploc bag through the sands to take out any iron. Lastly dont forget to check your oversize sieve for gold still adhering to the stone.
Hope this helps all the budding specie fossickers.
Jethro.
