Reedy creek (Beechworth) round 2

[MurrayC]

Headed back to Eldorado Friday afternoon for another crack at Reedy creek. This time with a new Angus McKirk AU trap. Got up there with enough light to scout around for a likely spot by kangeroo crossing, and even got a few test pans in before dark. Woke up 4am too eager to get into it. Zero degrees outside and putting on a wetsuit wasn't much fun, but under the light of my headlamp I was soon freezing myself silly but getting into the yellow stuff.

Spent all day there working the crevasses and bottom of the river. lots of fine flakey stuff. Late afternoon was pretty stuffed so packed it in and headed to Beechworth for a feed, then parked up the next night closer to woolshed falls.

Was a bit of a later start the next morning as I was feeling the effort of yesterday, but by 6am was at it again and getting some good flakes. Basically just spent the day digging down on the side of the river, removing rocks and scooping or sucking up sand and panning or sluicing it off. (Filled it in when I left)

The AU Trap: As have never used a sluice before I was somewhat nervous about throwing all my hard earned stuff down it for fear of losing it. But grew in confidence over the two days. I still panned off way too much and that slowed me down a bit. At the end of Sunday while It was still setup I gave it a test by dumping 4 full shovelfulls of dirt in from the riverbank. Sand was pouring out of it! I cleaned it out and still found 5 reasonable flakes of gold.

Beauty weekend! and such beautiful country. Being new to Vic i'm just loving my weekends out of Melbourne. Next time I want to go exploring out NW. If anyone can suggest a nice area for a bit of a dig around and an area to park up for the night that would be appreciated.

Pics.

Day 1 setup by Kangeroo crossing

Day 2 woolshed falls area

Au Trap and some specks of yellow

Diggings. I was still pulling beerbottle glass out from about 1/2 a meter down...

Final tally for the weekend

 

[MJB]

Excellent trip by the look of it Murray.

It is definitley beautiful country up there, at this rate you will never want to head back to NZ

Look forward to hearing about your next effort

Cheers

 

[Guest]

Loving your reports mate, keep them coming. Balx

 

[Miteymuz]

Nice work Muz.
I'll be up that way next weekend testing some new kit. I was just up from your spot in the pictures about a month back
and the water was about two feet higher.

 

[MurrayC]

Weekend forecast is looking ok up that way again weekend coming. Yeah I can't believe some of the damage around the area, you can see how high this river gets when it floods. I pulled up some moss 50 odd feet away from the river on a bedrock rockface, and it had 20 or so flecks of gold in it when I broke it up and panned it out.

I'm undecided what to do this weekend. I'm tempted to head back up there and keep working on that hole. I'm back in NZ the following two weekends.

If you do decide to hit the woolshed falls area over the weekend I'd be interested in catching you up there. The few people I've met on the river have had less experience than my none, so a few tips would be appreciated.

 

[AtomRat]

I've been wanting to check out Reedy Creek as well at some point. North west VIC you can prob try Wedderburn, but I do not know if there is any water there at all, someone else would have to answer that.

The sluice looks rather crafty, I like the look of it, and it seems to do a good job at actively moving the material

 

[joao garimpeiro]

BEAUTIFUL PLACE !!!!
thanks for posting Murrayc

 

[MurrayC]

How do you tell if you have found a diamond? I pulled this clear gem out of the pan on Sunday and promptly forgot about it until now.

Looks kinda yellow in the pic but is more clear with a sheer side. cuts glass and is pretty hard - just tried to bash it with pliers. haha no gently gently here.

Its pretty 'heavy' by feel - and did end up in the pan with the black sand when I picked it out as pretty unusual.

 

[Miteymuz]

Hey Muz,

Have you been going through my black sand jars?!

My guess is smokey quartz.
There is also a ton of small shards of broken glass in the creek.

Sorry mate, i just saw your post from the other day, i won't be able to make it up there this weekend, work commitments. bummed.
If you are coming back this way soon, we could meet up. Let me know. At the end of October, early november i'll be floating around Omeo and Buckland,
But i'll spend some time at Eldorado. I have a few new spots and new gear i want to try out.

 

[elbowgrease]

How do you tell if you have found a diamond? I pulled this clear gem out of the pan on Sunday and promptly forgot about it until now.

Looks kinda yellow in the pic but is more clear with a sheer side. cuts glass and is pretty hard - just tried to bash it with pliers. haha no gently gently here.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/3726/1411044193_img_2415.jpg

Its pretty 'heavy' by feel - and did end up in the pan with the black sand when I picked it out as pretty unusual.

Try and scratch it is probably the easiest way to begin to work out what it is.

If you try and scratch it with a piece of worm glass that you've found and you can't leave a mark on it, its safe to assume its not also a piece of glass.

Quartz crystal on the hardness scale is quite high, if you have a quartz crystal you can repeat the test and see if you can leave a mark. If you can't scratch it with quartz it must be harder than quartz so that eliminates that possibility and you will need to look at what possible stones it might be higher up on the hardness scale.

I found a topaz about the size of a pea in Reedy Creek a while back, its an amazing stone and to the naked eye pretty well flawless inside. This topaz was colourless and my initial though (and dream) was that it might be a diamond.

Topaz is harder that quartz so having a few quartz crystals at home I tried the scratch test and couldn't leave a mark. Given that I could be certain it was something better than just a quartz crystal I decided to investigate further.

I ended up taking the stone to a jeweller and gemmologist in town and they performed a specific gravity test on it and funnily enough it did come back in the diamond range (3.5 - 3.53SG) with my stone measuring 3.513SG, however the diamond range falls in a narrow band also within the topaz range (3.49 - 3.56SG), but despite it being in the diamond range the jewellers professional opinion is that the stone was a natural colourless topaz.

Never the less the stone was a great find. Fingers crossed what you have is at least a nice topaz or if you are really lucky something even more special.

 

[Guest]

This is a nice big old chunk of Quartz I found at Eldorado last summer, Pretty clear with that slightly smokey color wish it was a diamond . Its my favorite find from there, found a nice big bit of jasper too.

 

[Heatho]

Murray, looks like it may be a Zircon to me.

 

[joao garimpeiro]

This is a nice big old chunk of Quartz I found at Eldorado last summer, Pretty clear with that slightly smokey color wish it was a diamond . Its my favorite find from there, found a nice big bit of jasper too. https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/599/1411052658_quartz-optimized.jpg

Nice ! Nice quartz

 

[Ag Man]

Nice report from your weekend. Thanks for sharing.
Great to see you got gold too.
I can't wait to get back to Eldorado again...