old river beds

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yellowfever1986

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Hello everyone im only new to prospecting but i have an understanding of old river beds being a great place to find gold. The question i have and hopefully someone can answer for me is as follows.. i that gold deposits itself on old river beds on bed rock but i have found a certain area where there is defined river bed due to the large rounded stones sitting around 3 feet under the surface but underneath is at least another 5 to 6 feet of sand and no sign of bedrock is my best bet for highbanking this area to to stay in the area where the stones are as there is a little clay between them or to run the sand and gravels beneath the riverbed??? Ive test panned with mixed results on the concentrations of gold where there appears to be gold in both the sandy gravel and the stoney river bed?? I guess the question im asking is where would you believe in theory the greater concentration would be knowing that this is a prone flood area??? Any help on this would be appreciated :)
 
maybe it is just a flood plain and not a river bed , I have seen rocks the size of cars moved by flood waters. lots of flood events could have built the sand up over many years then a major flood could have dumped or rolled the larger ones on the upper layers maybe.
if you could find the edge of it and narrow trench your way down into it following the natural hills slope it would show you a good cross section of the layers and then test panning each definite layer might show which layers are holding the most gold.
The good news is you are getting gold :) now you just need to pin point what to dig . good luck and keep us posted :)
 
yellowfever1986 said:
Hello everyone im only new to prospecting but i have an understanding of old river beds being a great place to find gold. The question i have and hopefully someone can answer for me is as follows.. i that gold deposits itself on old river beds on bed rock but i have found a certain area where there is defined river bed due to the large rounded stones sitting around 3 feet under the surface but underneath is at least another 5 to 6 feet of sand and no sign of bedrock is my best bet for highbanking this area to to stay in the area where the stones are as there is a little clay between them or to run the sand and gravels beneath the riverbed??? Ive test panned with mixed results on the concentrations of gold where there appears to be gold in both the sandy gravel and the stoney river bed?? I guess the question im asking is where would you believe in theory the greater concentration would be knowing that this is a prone flood area??? Any help on this would be appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Reading from the bold text.....in my mind i'd be preparing myself to just do it all....or until such time as color quits in one area to the others..sounds like you may have found a nice honey-hole to keep you busy for some time.. :D

Gypsy
 
Have a read this may be of help to you. It kind of fits what your asking. cheers digger

Gold in placer jack douglas

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006544180

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Wow what a good thread, I am so interested in this too, and Jembai, that book looks awesome.
 
Hi Mate
Just my two bobs worth. Sounds to me like you could have a few situations there. As Atom said they could have been placed there. Or could have been a later geological disturbance that caused the rocks above. The gold is on the bottom of the river bed. Placer gold mining in America is different as the weather rain fall there is different than here causing the gold to be distributed differently. I'm not saying don't read up on it, just understand that Australia's gold deposits are different.
 
G'day Yellowfever. I think that what you have is possibly not just an old riverbed, but an old flood plain. My reasoning follows along these lines - with rivers, there are young rivers which erode constantly down to bedrock, there are youngish rivers that don't erode, but do transport sediment, and then there are old rivers that deposit.

The old river occasionally gets charged up, due to flood and changes it's nature and volitility. It transports sediment, rock or boulders where it used to deposit.

I could be wrong, but, at one time this country had massive amounts of water, much more than today, for a certain period of time, as is evident by some of the boulders that have been shifted by water in our favourite creeks, then, for some reason that precipitation died back to what it is now.

I reckon what you have Yellowfever is a tired old river, that gently built up a flood plain by depositing all its sand and fine sediment, followed by a time, possibly not that long ago geologically, where the nature of the river changed, bearing rock and cobbles much further downstream than usual, followed by a return to its usual nature.

So what I would do is work the larger stuff primarily, where the river had the integrity to transport larger particles than normal - I reckon if you're going to find gold, that's where it would be. Goodluck.
 
Quote Placer gold mining in America is different as the weather rain fall there is different than here causing the gold to be distributed differently. End quote

Hi mate no offence intended but I must disagree with this statement about the water having a different effect on the gold location and where it is placed. But you are right in saying that Placer mining is different in the US and other countries compared to here. The reason been is the mineralisation it is never the same even here it changes. But to me if water was a factor I reckon that we would be seeing a whole lot of different sort of gear than what we are seeing today. Cheers mate
 
Jembaicumbene said:
Quote Placer gold mining in America is different as the weather rain fall there is different than here causing the gold to be distributed differently. End quote

Hi mate no offence intended but I must disagree with this statement about the water having a different effect on the gold location and where it is placed. But you are right in saying that Placer mining is different in the US and other countries compared to here. The reason been is the mineralisation it is never the same even here it changes. But to me if water was a factor I reckon that we would be seeing a whole lot of different sort of gear than what we are seeing today. Cheers mate
Click to expand...

That was told to me years ago by a chap who knew his stuff, he ran dredges, and big ones at that. He had been all over the world dredging. He said the gold in Australia is on the bottom due to there being more rainfall and water flowing in Australia. But in America the gold is distributed though out the alluvial wash from the bottom to top. Apparently it has to do with the amount of water that is in a river flow mixed up with the alluvial as it moves downhill.
 
Mate I can only go on experience and must disagree with that. i am finding that the gold is from top to bottom here. Creek work is easy you only need to do a cross cut across the creek from bank to bank, testing for the run as you go. River work is a lot different where a lot of other factors come into play and you really need to use the old noodle to work it out.

I think this quote fits the bill rather nicely.

Quote from Gold in placer ; how to find it.

Necessity is not only the mother of invention, it is also the mother of knowledge. The prospector who starts out with a good supply grub, equipment and heaps of cash, is handicapped in comparison with his brother prospector who has only a small supply of grub, equipment and cash.
When it is a case of get the gold or you do not eat, the incentive to work and find the gold is increased a hundred fold, and the prospector who sees his pile of beans diminishing and not enough gold coming in to buy more, starts doing some deep thinking about where that gold found its resting place when it was carried down the stream by the rushing waters of the past storms.

cheers Jembaicumbene
 
Yeh your right, sorry . When my mate told me the gold here was at the bottom. We were in Victoria. And it is true in Vic. What side of the great divide did you see this?
 
NSW, mate I think this is funny were both right in what we say. I guess it all comes down to the area your working. Creeks and Rivers can change in a few hundred yards. Gold is funny at times its not where it should be and be where it should not. As the old saying goes you must test every layer top to bottom and everything in between. Cheers
 
Jembaicumbene said:
NSW, mate I think this is funny were both right in what we say. I guess it all comes down to the area your working. Creeks and Rivers can change in a few hundred yards. Gold is funny at times its not where it should be and be where it should not. As the old saying goes you must test every layer top to bottom and everything in between. Cheers
Click to expand...

Rivers and creeks also change over millions of years along with the weather/climate and geological activity, so looking at today's climate and weather conditions and trying to compare it to America has no foundation as the processes of erosion and deposition are the same only separated by time, 10000 to 15000 years ago you could walk across to many of Australias coastal Islands and the continent was much wetter, the native people had burial grounds that are many kilometers from the coast that are now submerged under many meters of water. I think its all very fascinating with so much to learn to be successful at finding that yellow stuff we go nutts over :)
 
Quote. looking at today's climate and weather conditions and trying to compare it to America has no foundation as the processes of erosion and deposition are the same only separated by time. End Quote

I did not say that Parks stated that in post number #10. I disagreed with the statement about the weather in post #13.
 

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