Confusing ground, fine gold!

Been sampling a creek round Beechworth area with no success locating where it's coming from?

It's flood gold, every which way, there's more flood gold!

I've tracked it till it peta's out, so I thought I was on a winner Biggest looser so far anyway!

No records whatsoever, Plenty of rock piles??.. From what I've been told from a cuplu good sources, the area was well populated in the great depression period! So Plenty of rock piles, really means a hole lot of work with little to no outcome? Poor buggers!

It's a big area! where ever there's lots of granite bolder's in the stream, there's less gold! Wherever there's bed rock that splits straight? and or cubic the fine gold seems to be more? But again It's flood gold it's higher up the bank????????????????

Any theories, I'm all ears!

Cheers
Chris.

The trick is when flood gold is all over the place is to ignore it if ya can, thats only the superficial
gold in the area, you can bet the old blokes in the 30s weren't chasing that at all, they would have been
putting down the holes looking for a better richer wash level.
It pays to have a look in one of them old holes, most times the better gold was on a bluish/green puggy
clay layer.
One exception to that is when i was finding flour or flood gold at grass root level so i put down a hole
and tested every new wash layer and colour change layer, the best gold was in a black charcoal layer
2ft down, this i assumed was the flood debris from a real big old bushfire, which would have denuded
the ground and the very next flood that came through took away all the ashes and the surface gold
and dropped it in that layer.

Another foot below that was the puggy bluish/green clay, that held some great course nuggety gold and
hardly no fine gold at all, it was hard to treat bein clay but well worth it.

Pete

Man Pete
This sort of insight is awesome, It's like you've lived a lifetime of prospecting bloody awesome.
cheers
Lee

I wish it was that simple Pete.

Where the flood golds at it's greatest, I've dug test holes at 10 foot intervals across the small valley, the deeper yu dig the lesser the gold???

I'm talken 6foot holes .. Flood layers within the creek are only gold bearing to about 2 foot, I've dug down to bed rock and NO gold???????

Doin me head in

P.s. My only theory is, it's leaching from the water table from a not to distant mountain? when the grounds saturated enough, out it comes!

Cheers
Chris.

That dosent make sense,someday.
If the source has been shedding gold for a millenia,there should be bigger stuff at depth.
Either the source has only started shedding in the past hundred or so years,or your just digging in the wrong spots.
Consider that the creek changed course many times,and you may be digging test
holes on previous straight sections where there is now an inside bend.
Maybe the ground your testing had too much fall or was too steep,and without digging a shitload more
test holes youll be none the wiser. Does the area have false bottoms? Have you found any spots with that
puggy blue/grey clay?
Are the rock bars slate?
As you can see mate there are many questions with no easy answers.

Thank's CrustyGus

Doesn't make sense to you, should see how I feel

The county rock is a mix of Granite, sandstone an slate!

The area I'm at is flat, the creek does a steep assent to about the 300 meter mark with no gold, so it's not the higher elevations descending the gold! It's so close I can smell it, just a shame the wind keeps changen direction or

Me really confused.

Cheers
Chris.

Hi Chris
Have you got any photo's of your area? this may help us all understand and learn a little from your little/ big problem, how wide is your valley, how steep are the valley walls, where is the gold more concentrated ( bends, straights ), you say there are piles of rocks? do they match the rocks you are pulling out of the creek, I remember you saying you got some fines up on a flat? is that right? did you work out the significance of the rock wall/ cliff?
sorry about all the ???????????????? just trying to help your thinking process.
Keep digging, I'm available in Dec, I'm headed to Tassie through your parts.
cheers
Lee

Yes No Yes and No Took some pics, they turned out useless! Rock wall, yes crushed some samples "Nothing" Yes the rock piles are the same type of rock that's in the creek, I've forgot what yu asked?
It's flat ground and it's cryen fine gold!


Cheers
Chris

Hi Chris,
My son and I picked a spot off the map, looked good. We started at the bottom and sampled, panned and detected, and came up with nothing. We had a gut feeling about this creek, so we worked our way up, and still nothing, kept going up and towards the end of the day I did a pan and come up with about 40-50 tiny flecks of gold. There was gold there, we wandered up to have a look further up to see what it looked like, and it narrowed into a deep gorge, as it was getting dark we had to call it a day. The next time we went up, we decided to go up as far as we could and then work our way down, we got to a rock wedged in between the sandstone walls, the other side was a deep hole, if you dropped in you would be waist deep in water and this rock would have been above your head, on the other side was the same, a rock wedged between the sandstone walls, and this also would be above our heads. No-one has crossed this point. At the lower rock some-one had driven in wooden stakes into the sandstone, so we knew some-one had been there, a long time ago. We filled the hole with rocks so we could get across. Once over my son started detecting, thought he could hear something, but wasn't sure, it was only a murmur, not target sound. This area is quite flat for 15m, then the creek forked. Right fork again had a boulder wedged between the walls, head height, so we took the left one, in trying to get over some logs, I pulled a rock out of the sandstone bank (slightly larger than one's fist) looked at the underside and threw over my shoulder, my son came up to the hole looked in and pulled out a .3 piece then another smaller, 6 pieces were retrieved, we now knew there was good gold to be found. We have worked this area for 2 years now. In that 15m flat stretch over 3oz was pulled (have pic in finds A DAYS FIND). We have argued as to where the gold has come from, where the main source is. And the only answer we can come up with is that it has come down in the landslides, washed there and settled. We have checked other creeks in the area, and only come up with 1 or 2 tiny specks, we noted that there has been very few, even no landslides into those creeks.
The conclusion is that large gold does not travel far, if it does it's caught in a mud slide to be carried any distance, it works it's way down if anything. The fines travel some distances in flood waters.
You may look into going higher than you have been, even if the gold peters out, you may find more once you get higher, as we found certain points will trap and hold the gold.
I hope this story helps shed some light on things, it's only on my experience on what I have found.
Of interest on Easter Monday I pulled up 1.84g in pieces, a little over 2g with fines, and on Saturday 1.45 and ,3 of fines
Good luck Chris in your search

Ok,so the area is fairly flat,now.
Look for subtile signs where the crrek would have wandered over time.Creeks in shallow valleys tend to
change course regularly,where as in steeper valleys,dont deviate much at all.
Check higher up the creek for the source. It may be a buried gutter in the bedrock,entering at right angles to the creek from
a certain bank. The source may even be from a shallow gully alot further up than you think.
Consider the errosion resistance of certain ground types. Harder packed clay ground that consists of decomposed slate,
Ironstone and gravels will be less likely to errode,and hold gold,than say Red loamy soil.

ricken wracken, stupid gold spot, Waaaaaa sucks, don't like it anymore, waste of F-en time, Ahhhhhhhhhh .

Anyone got a 500 foot auger they can lend out??

gidday someday,
when I inquired about looking for gold between Bairnsdale and Beechworth, I was told it was all dust area, no nuggets be a waste of time tecting, only panning and sluicing, unless some-one comes in on this and can confirm differently

Gday goldseeker, your pretty much on the money, LOTS of fine gold, there where some good nuggets pulled right across the board, but they where found at huge depths, definitely not surface nuggs

I didn't have a prob with fine gold until now, this area is doin me head in almost lost a 6 foot crowbar when busten up hard ground at a tad over 2 foot? Crowbar wanted to visit China!

It may actually be worth running your 5000 over a bit of the ground Chris... if you haven't already

Robert

Thanks for that insight Rob who wouldu thought

Unfortunately the area is well overgrown with more junk than yu can poke a stick at Then it turns into billygoat country, so me 5000 keeps me car company while I'm diggen samples :)

There's a quartz wash in a straight section of the creek, which I thought was done by another prospector? I now get the feeling that wash is being forced out from a much greater depth! about 30 meters away at right angles to this wash is where I almost lost the crowbar ??

Chris.

knocked up a 65mm hand augur, 5 foot long with another 5 foot extension and still couldn't find bed rock? I'l knock up 2 more 5 foot extensions, if I still don't hit bedrock I don't want to know about it This spot sucks!

Yal have to nickname it the "Linda Lovelace patch" :rolf: :rolf:

Don't mind a My god you can swallow! Just show me yu golden bits when I hit base