Oallen Ford NSW Information and Questions

Prospecting Australia

Help Support Prospecting Australia:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Ryan1981

Ryan1981

Ryan Talbot
Joined
Mar 26, 2013
Messages
314
Reaction score
117
Location
Canberra, ACT
Hi guys thanks for the warm welcome,sorry i havnt been back earlier but been flat out,
Anyway, Im heading to Oallen this coming weekend, and i am trying out my new high banker and last time i was there i just keep digging deeper and deeper, at the side of a bank.to about 1 m deep and 2m wide.
Is this the best strategy for Oallen, or should i just dig over a larger area/and shallower??

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks guys and girls, good luck and i hope you all find some big nuggets.
 
I reckon your better of just moving to top 400mm there and lots of it, just my opinion the oallen regulars may have other strategies.

DD
 
Oallen has mainly fine gold Ryan, :eek: and a lot of it gets moved around with each flood....you rarely do well going deep an any part of the Shoalhaven, and the best results are nearly always adjacent to the rock bars where the faster sections of the river deposit "football" size rocks. Anything larger and the flow is too strong for the gold to fall out, and becomes more widespread, rather than concentrated. We stick to the rock bars with no more than 40 cm of overburden on them..and usually average from 5 to 8 grams a day. The river in the Oallen area consists of long pools with interlocking rapids, where the bedrock is usually exposed. these interlocking rapids is where you want to be. Your hi-banker needs to be portable enough to carry to these areas...and if you get them there, you will do a lot better than near the Forde itself....Cheers Wal. :)
 
Shame I didn't see this post earlier I was out at the ford today. When we setup on the gravel bar we normally just look at washing the top 200-400mm or so, but we also end up going a little deeper than we mean to normally :rolleyes: We have had a lot more succsess doing this than when we dug deep out there.
We don't get the gold Wal and Liz do though, we did a 1/2 day and managed 1gram that is good for us :D
 
Here was some of our gold for the day.
IMG_0085_zpsbdf628d5.jpg

IMG_0145_zps137493bd.jpg
 
Nice colour there Ian....weather is almost getting cool enough to make the Forde enjoyable.....will try to catch up when your next out there mate...Cheers Wal. :)
 
hello shivan very nice looks like you had a great day .i hope my pan looks like that one day
 
Thanks for the posts on oallen guys

just curious if you have theories on where the gold came from

being fine as it is , i am assuming it could have come from at least a 3 - 10 kilometres upstream and could have been in the reefs as fine nuggets or even slabs from ounces to kilos in size " when it was born "

The quartz reefs where that gold came from could have also long been eroded from wherever they are and could be now sand out on the beach around wollongong for all i know , or the original reef might have been chiselled and picked out in the gold rush days , crushed and dumped in mullock heaps in one of the many mines up river.

What i want to look for is the original sources where maybe parts of the reef might still exist , or search in the eroded gravels below them , whether they be in the river , old dried up river beds or washed down the hills to gullies in between

any thortz peepil ?

Yes i have good hiking boots and a swag ;)
 
G'day HeadsUp,

The gold from the full length of the Shoalhaven River eroded out what's called the Braidwood Granite Belt. The belt is extremely wide and extends from well below Nerriga to near its headwaters in the Deua National Park. Apart from a few reefs in the lower belt section around Nerriga, pretty well all the gold eroded as very fine flakes from within the Granite belt.

The size and shape of the gold is consistent throughout the full length of the river, and hasn't broken down from larger masses of gold. Nuggets were never found anywhere within the belt, though "species" with small amounts of gold were reported from several fissures. More ancient streams in the Mongarlowe region, and closer to Majors Creek, produced nuggets from eroded veins but these never made it into the Shoalhaven system.

To shed some light to your question, (try to find the original source). The source of the Shoalhaven gold is some 20km wide and a good 100km long, and the same size (Flour Gold) can be panned within the full length and breadth of this belt. The chances of finding a nugget within this system are very slim, and the best option would be to look at outlying fissures where there is a more reasonable chance of finding "Species". Hope this is of some help.

Cheers Wal. :)
 
Wal, the site is the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping, and the link takes you to a PDF of this paper:

EVIDENCE OF A GRANITE-RELATED SOURCE FOR THE
BRAIDWOOD-ARALUEN-MAJORS CREEK GOLDFIELDS, NSW,
AUSTRALIA
Kenneth G. McQueen
CRC LEME, Department of Geology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT

It should be safe.
 
WalnLiz said:
G'day HeadsUp,

The gold from the full length of the Shoalhaven River eroded out what's called the Braidwood Granite Belt. The belt is extremely wide and extends from well below Nerriga to near its headwaters in the Deua National Park. Apart from a few reefs in the lower belt section around Nerriga, pretty well all the gold eroded as very fine flakes from within the Granite belt.

The size and shape of the gold is consistent throughout the full length of the river, and hasn't broken down from larger masses of gold. Nuggets were never found anywhere within the belt, though "species" with small amounts of gold were reported from several fissures. More ancient streams in the Mongarlowe region, and closer to Majors Creek, produced nuggets from eroded veins but these never made it into the Shoalhaven system.

To shed some light to your question, (try to find the original source). The source of the Shoalhaven gold is some 20km wide and a good 100km long, and the same size (Flour Gold) can be panned within the full length and breadth of this belt. The chances of finding a nugget within this system are very slim, and the best option would be to look at outlying fissures where there is a more reasonable chance of finding "Species". Hope this is of some help.

Cheers Wal. :)
Click to expand...

beautiful answer Wal

You have an eloquent simple way of saving me 10 years of hard work and the cost of 10 pairs of worn out shoes.

If the resource is largely fine gold spread all over 2000 square kilometres , then i have to come back to asking nature what she has done to collect and store it for us . which is i suppose what you occupy your mind thinking about each time you load a shovel full of gravel into your HB :8

back to my drawing board

cheers peepil .

happy hunting
 
Still worth scouting the lower reaches in the Neriga region for "species" as quite a few have been recorded. Wouldn't mind joining you on some scouting sessions on the fringes of these granite belts. Best of luck,

Cheers Wal. :)
 
Ouch 5 inches down here puts us under water, the Last time we had that much rain in a short period the channels burst and we where cut off for a week!
 

Similar threads

Bradcox
Newbie from Canberra ready to give it ago
Replies
2
Views
235
Bradcox
Bradcox
WalnLiz
Gold replenished at Oallen Forde...
2
Replies
21
Views
7K
WalnLiz
WalnLiz
J
Manticore Information and Questions
2
Replies
24
Views
5K
grubstake
grubstake
Phantom
Deeper Targets - Shovel Selection Pinpointing - Volcanic Soil
Replies
6
Views
1K
Windar
W
mbasko
Bridle Track NSW - Best places to camp.
Replies
1
Views
1K
mbasko
mbasko

Latest posts

Top