I thought these were illegal...

G'day Dez

Its not the gear thats illegal but the places that you can use em, most places that dredgings worth doing in are now deemed catchment areas so no dredging can be done there anymore..
Different rules for each state too.
In some states you cant use gear that lifts or sucks gravels outta creeks or any bloody where, the
greenies whinge about the dredge holes but i see em as great swimming holes, i used to take the family
to em on a hot day and they would swim while i ran the river sluice and put a few dishes through also.


Pete

Bloody Bob "loose butt" Brown and the fairy brigade, I am a green thinking person but they are something else! They will have it soon that national parks can only be used between 9 am and 11 am and only if you are holding a gay marriage conducted by a greens endorsed transexual celebrant...

And wearing Buttockless chaps

They are so off the planet they would probably consider your avatar animal abuse :joker:

Too true Pete & Dez,
I know a few spots that are ripe for the pickin with a dredge seeing how its been banned here for 15 years or so.
There are still a few blokes doin it on the sly,but Im not that keen.

Dez wrote:They are so off the planet they would probably consider your avatar animal abuse :joker:

LMAO very funny,new meaning to plucka a duck.

Dez.
In the early 80's we bought a Keene 3" dredge which went pretty well.

Got some good gold, Maquarie/Turon r. and then with a few dollars had one built to our specifications.
Five inch suction, VW motor, 3'wide x 12'tray and could that shift some gravel.
But in actual fact our gold recovery per cu. yd. diminished mainly because we could not properly balance the flow rates.

At Ophir we met the Yank (Herb Blake?) who invented? brought out the small surface dredge which was suspended under an car innertube. A 5hp. motor and all very portable.
He showed us a large coffee jar of fine gold, must have been close to 200oz. The problem there was that the creek was contaminated with effluent from the Orange abbatoir and quite a few blokes got pretty crook. A lot of gold came out of there regardless.

These days a bloke can't even dredge a creek on his own property.

The remains of our old dredge is still somewhere in the shed.
Your comments bring back good memories though.

I reckon that dredge you show in the pic. would struggle to lift much gravel, but I s'pose its horses for courses.

I am just going to bite the bullet and buy my first detector, I still plan to build PI, I am tossing up between gold bug and an sd, those dredges sound like they would be a winner... Especilly since friends of mine are buying 5000 acres out bathurst way with creeks galore! Oh well

How about dredging on a mining scale, Can big business in Oz use a dredge?

ha pete you are crazy
whats with all this sh@t about buttlesschaps they are very comftable here in the pilbara
good scratchin
cheers the speciman

Goldstalker.
Its all about water resources today, when we were dredging we turned the Maquarie river a nasty brown colour for many miles downstream.
Now a NP/EPA helicopter would spot from afar and a couple of blokes would be heading for massive fines. No escape from the "eye in the sky"

However, having said, that if adequate settling ponds could be constructed and contained, an adequate supply of water available, there should be no reason why not.

I think the old dredge at Eldorado (Vic) operated on that principle and large sapphire wash plants (200t+/hr.) have done that here in NE NSW, all closed down now due to high extraction cost/low sapphire prices.

goldstalkergpx wrote:How about dredging on a mining scale, Can big business in Oz use a dredge?

Money talks.

They've replaced the dredge with bulldozers, scrapers, excavators and the like these days.

Robert

This is the old dredge at Maldon in Victoria.
"Mr George Heywood commenced working the site at Porcupine Flat in 1958 where he developed the dredge operation on Porcupine Creek. He purchased the dredge sometime after 1958, and it may not have been fully operational until after 1973. Operations ceased in 1984, after moderate success. This dredge is a smaller reconstruction of the one that operated in the Jim Crowe Creek south of Newstead, from 1948 to 1954"


[img][/img]

Robert

goldnomad wrote:

goldstalkergpx wrote:How about dredging on a mining scale, Can big business in Oz use a dredge?

Money talks.

They've replaced the dredge with bulldozers, scrapers, excavators and the like these days.

Robert

G'day Robert, I realize the above ( I have just given away the mining caper)

The reason I ask is I know of a mine that is about to kick off soon and ground water is going to be a major problem and I hear that dredging will be the way they combat that.

Having said that, I guess that they dredged Port Phillip bay a couple of years ago didin't they.

goldstalkergpx wrote:
Having said that, I guess that they dredged Port Phillip bay a couple of years ago didin't they.

They did indeed gsgpx. And didn't the greenies put up a stink about it.
Now...not a peep out of them.

Robert

goldnomad wrote:

goldstalkergpx wrote:
Having said that, I guess that they dredged Port Phillip bay a couple of years ago didin't they.

They did indeed gsgpx. And didn't the greenies put up a stink about it.
Now...not a peep out of them.

Robert

It was actually that guy that dances like a spastic duck and can't sing from midnight oil that signed the OK for that to go ahead, was he a environmentalist or something?? let his fellow greenies down on that one didn't he!!!!

It was exciting to see that one go down as I was working and living in Geelong at the time.
I have heard many reports from mates (but the best on the news, just to stick it to them) that the fish are now back, bigger and better than before.

Yeah... the Right Honorable Peter Garrett.

Hasn't he been conspicuous by his absence lately?!!!

Robert

I had dredges here in the California Motherlode for 30+ years. Did pretty good on the whole. Now the same has happened here. No more dredging in California... it's all political crap and a genuine pisser. Won't be long before the pinheads make it illegal to even pick up a nugget.

I wish I knew about gold when I went trekking through amador county a few years back... Very scenic!