the lone nugget

everyones had one -that lone nugget in the middle of nowhere with not another signal of any type within half a days swinging-we have all heard the theory about emu gold but not under 10 cm with a hard surface-i cant help thinking that maybe their is a higher power somewhere and he or she is laughing their head off-

had one earlier this year. followed a quartz trail to a eroded hill and found just one specie within a few minutes of detecting containing about 4.5g of gold, grid searched with a buddy for half a day and couldnt find another piece, thats gold.

One!! One lone nugget!!

Jeeez, in my many years of bippin', I've had hundreds of the damn things. Not for nothing was I once known throughout the land as, "The King Of The One Piece Patch". I'd find one bit and then keep 4 operators tied up for three days trying in vain to find the main patch.

Whenever I found a piece, my mates at the time, would let out a collective groan,"Oh Lord, we pray to thee, please make it two or three!" 

Cat.

The thing that drives me crazy is do i go back and continue the search or move on a couple of km and start again -with that nagging doubt in the back of your mind that you missed something -what i would give to be a goldfish and every day everything would be new

I could only imagine how frustrating that would be, certainly get ya scratching the head.
the question always would remain, how could this happen???
me personally 1 nugget is a good find but the few times I've been out scrub others have picked up a few whenever I've pulled a piece or 2.
great post P.dragon

Thanks Aussie,maybe we are thinking about this on the wrong slant ,it may not be just the odd stray emu distributing nuggets maybe the crows have got into the act as well-

we had a murder of crow watch our camp a couple of trips back and when we were not around camp, they would come in and open boxes etc to get at food. they love shiny foil and you better watch your keys they love them, gold i cant see why not. in the UK as a lad climbing up to a ravens or crows nest sometimes yielded coins, rings and all sought of shiny things, I believe they use them as display for the females???. should we have the detector facing up sometimes? maybe thats where the nuggets around roots of trees come from? food for thought,

may need to start wearing hard hats out there---I swear that I had the same crow follow me around the diggings up near Paynes for a week last year I was starting to think he knew something I didnt-

And here is little ole me thinkin I was lord of the "one nuggie patch"
HOWEVER:
Last year we happened on a spot, certainly not virgin ground it had tyre tracks across and ashes where a camp fire had been.
Did look reasonable though, and after nearly a week, in an area of about 100m.x 50m. we had pulled 48 nugs. up to 3gms.
Now my missus takes longer to back fill a dig than I do unearthing it and where a nug. has been dug she puts a piece of quartz on top to identify. Very neat and tidy.
Fast forward to this year, we went back there for another look and could not see any trace of previous digs or any other sign of activity.
Gave it day of tracking and found one nug. (we had missed) but had we never been there before it would have simply been yet another "one nugget patch".
We dont have a lot of experience yet, but I do reckon there are very few places where a detector has not been swung, for instance look where DDH went to and recorded in his G&G books.
Mike

Much of the goldfields in WA has been above the sea and exposed to erosion for over 350 million years. The landsurface has been lowered by over a kilometre by erosion over the last 350 million years. All the gold released from the rock has been cradled by the lowering landsurface and spread far and wide. Some of those nuggets you are finding came from reefs that were hundreds of metres above where you stand. Thats why we always find one nugget, get the heart racing and then slog on in the spot and find nothing, however there is some enormous loners sitting out there somewhere waiting to be found.

Ladies and gentlemen.
It is an unwritten rule that most of your finds will be of the "one patch" variety.
If you happen upon a "more-than-one-patch" strike then you are just plain bl##dy greedy!   

Robert

Tributer wrote:Much of the goldfields in WA has been above the sea and exposed to erosion for over 350 million years. The landsurface has been lowered by over a kilometre by erosion over the last 350 million years. All the gold released from the rock has been cradled by the lowering landsurface and spread far and wide. Some of those nuggets you are finding came from reefs that were hundreds of metres above where you stand. Thats why we always find one nugget, get the heart racing and then slog on in the spot and find nothing, however there is some enormous loners sitting out there somewhere waiting to be found.

Very true, Tributer, what you're describing is a "peneplain". It also must be realised that as well as being a heavily eroded "peneplain" (of which WA is a classic example) it has also been underwater "up & down" several times, beneath the sea. All this action leads to gold being spread into some very odd places, sometimes kms from where it formed, without a hill in sight and VERY worn nuggets when there isn't a decent, fast, watercourse for a thousand miles!

Peneplain link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peneplain

Another: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/449770/peneplain

WA has some of the oldest ground in the world having formed when the Earth was cooling, as does South Africa, to which WA was once connected. Thus, WA's ground has had sufficient time, probably close to 2 billion years, to suffer "peneplanation" or just plain old "worn awayness"!! It was mountainous and now it's flat.

Cat

VERY INTERESTING. this is exactly what we see at least through the eastern goldfields. gentle undulating hills for miles and miles. so when we are trying to track down a source, the nugget trail could be running across a hill or even uphill to the current contours as what we see is only what is left of what once was a rugged landscape. all the hollows would of filled up with eroded material explaining the huge finds found in depressions. the mountains have been smashed for millions of years leaving all the rubble and gold scattered over the new plains. so when out prospecting anywhere out there is potential good ground and there will be gold to be found it just may be tiny undetectable flakes or sub gramers or if lucky many ounces.
During the days after the muster it, rained constantly on one of the night at the new ground, the whole area became a lake and the streams of water continuously branched out and rejoined back together trying to find the low paths. one thing i noticed is that what I thought was uphill was actually downhill and also how much and the shear density of rocks and soil that was removed and re deposited just from a bit of rain.
there is a lot to learn from observation

There was an excellent doco on SBS last week (I think it was SBS) of how the continents formed.  If you look at the world map, NZ, and New Guinea were once attached to Oz.
I have one important question, why is Collingwood still attached to Australia     
Sorry, but I had to ask  

Collingwood was born during the early gold rushes of Victoria, with the huge influx of people from around the world Melbourne grew and the poor [not so lucky gold diggers] and new arrivals from overseas formed slums outside Melbourne now known as Collingwood and Fitzroy.
These suberbs today are now trendy places to live, well fitzroy anyway  

oops

snapper wrote:Collingwood was born during the early gold rushes of Victoria, with the huge influx of people from around the world Melbourne grew and the poor [not so lucky gold diggers] and new arrivals from overseas formed slums outside Melbourne now known as Collingwood and Fitzroy.
These suberbs today are now trendy places to live, well fitzroy anyway  

Try buying cheap property there now.

Collingwood median house price $640,000

Fitzroy median house price $815,000

Fremantle median house price $582,000

OOPS!!!

Robert

yes Robert, at those prices their definatly not slums anymore, glad you agree