Shallow Nuggets (Not Near Old Diggings)

[VicGoldHunter]

Ive been detecting for around 2 years and something Im still not entirely familiar with is gold bearing ground that is not just near or, on old diggings the only gold Ive ever found has always been on or very near old diggings.

My question is say in WA Ive seen lots of people just detecting virgin ground that is flat and the soil looks quite hard compact. From my understanding the soil has to be a type of clay and littered with quartz for it to hold nuggets and be shallow enough to detect? Does this have to be a certain type of ground for it to hold gold? Seems like the areas Ive come across this seem to be mostly north west in the triangle. Waanyarra, Bendigo, Inglewood, Kingower and so on that red looking ground peppered with ironstone quartz.

 

[kingswood]

Cant speak for Victoria, but my approach is basically to search geological and magnetic imaging maps to find areas of "virgin" ground that are similar to known gold bearing rock/structure types in my area. Then I tend to start from there

 

[Moneybox]

A lot of this ground in WA looks like virgin ground however a lot of it has been previously mined. I looked at a wide open flat that had become vacant so I thought it was worth a look with the thought of pegging it if I found gold. It was nicely scattered with quartz and iron, appeared to be dead flat with just a few scattered low bushes. After picking up the first few nails and the odd bullet I detected a deep signal that sounded promising. I started to dig but needed something better than a pick so sprinted back the couple hundred metres and got the 6' crowbar and post hole shovel. I had sparks coming off the crowbar before I finally retrieved the target about 350mm down. It was a heavy unexploded bullet. I sat there looking around at the ground. There was absolutely no sign that the ground had been disturbed but this bullet could not have been there without it being covered by soil movement. That day I dug several other targets, not so deep but deep enough to prove that this was definitely not virgin ground.

The freshly dug ground stands out with a clear change in colour so that it's impossible to cover your tracks but after a few years of erosion the heavy iron content and weathering leaves no trace. Even though this ground can be quite flat the water flow in heavy rain is amazing and it obviously moves a lot of dirt.

 

[Big Johno]

I guess most people would have a good yarn about virgin ground
my best was somewhere in WA north of Laverton I drove on a long track that ended, I could see a hill about 2 kilometres from the end of the track, I drove through virgin bush to the hill, got out the car, said to my mate we are seriously in no mans land here, set up my 5000 with a couple of sweeps about 5 metres from the car and bingo found a $2 coin ?????? then about a half hour later in absolutely virgin bush got big signal at the base of a large tree, I dug a 700 deep hole under the tree and found it was a corrugated iron sheet that the tree had grown over. I would swear the area had never been walked on, I now tell newbies every square metre of dirt in WA has been prospected, just not all with detectors. Those old buggers just blow my mind, hats off to them.

 

[oldtimerROB]

On a hillside south of Maryborough and 100 m from old diggings I saw someone had raked a small area so I decided to investigate and detect 20 m away further up the hill in virgin ground and found a 2 inch stone covered in a black metal. I previously found a half inch stone covered in the same metal in another goldfield. Could be this metal is located near gold bearing ground or it is just random. The metal or mineral is non corrodible.

 

[Guest]

Ive been detecting for around 2 years and something Im still not entirely familiar with is gold bearing ground that is not just near or, on old diggings the only gold Ive ever found has always been on or very near old diggings.

My question is say in WA Ive seen lots of people just detecting virgin ground that is flat and the soil looks quite hard compact. From my understanding the soil has to be a type of clay and littered with quartz for it to hold nuggets and be shallow enough to detect? Does this have to be a certain type of ground for it to hold gold? Seems like the areas Ive come across this seem to be mostly north west in the triangle. Waanyarra, Bendigo, Inglewood, Kingower and so on that red looking ground peppered with ironstone quartz.

G'day

The notion that the soil has to be of a particular type to hold nuggets is not really correct, and even the widely believed notion that you frequently hear about the ground that has to have that "salt and pepper" look to contain gold, while this is indicative to many areas that you will detect in WA but I can tell you from my own experience that the gold does not care where it is or what the ground looks like, some of the best gold finds I have had has come from spots that you would walk through to get to somewhere else that looked more promising.

Most of the gold that you would find here out on open flats could have traveled from some distance away or may have come from some long weathered away structures once in that area, sometimes there are clues that may give you some inkling as to where the gold may have come from but many times there is nothing at all, an old timer told me once that what you are seeing on the ground now, meaning all the scattered quartz, ironstone and other rocks are just the concentrates from structures that existed there millions of years ago, so its likely that a lot of the gold we find out on the flats and salt lakes would be just the dregs from these as well, when you think about the age of this land and the harsh weather conditions we have its not hard to imagine that this notion would be correct.

All you can do is walk the ground and see what is there, I have found plenty of single nuggets in open flat ground nothing to look at areas as well and then spent many hours in the spot without picking up another piece, we always say it was either dropped by an old timer or fell out of an emu's bum :awful:, so don't put them in your mouth to clean them as I have seen people do.

cheers

stayyerAU