How to start investigating quartz outcrop?

I have a property in the Snowy Monaro region that has milky quartz rocks with black dots/specks/veins and/or rusty coloured veins/stains through them spread right across my 100 acres.
I have three distinct hills or peaks, with a lot of milky quartz lying on the ground everywhere. Upon investigating the hills by foot, I discovered an area at the top where there was visible rocks containing various colours of milky quartz, from translucent to completely white, the whiter ones with lots of black specks. I followed the trail of milky quartz down the hill, finding a huge outcrop of boulders that were primarily what looked like stained black quartz crystals (Alien eggs). Below this on the hill was a lot more of the quartz rocks as described above. The black quartz crystal rocks/boulders are up to five feet high and wide and the area showing above ground is about 100 square metres or so. This outcrop is about a third way from the top.
My property sits between two old gold mines, one alluvial mine about 3km to the north west and a quartz gold reef mine about 5km to the south east.
In a NSW mines map of known reef discoveries (marked with solid lines), there was a solid line that stopped at that mine to my south east. The line turned solid again about 10km to my north west, where another quartz reef mine was located. In between the solid lines was a dotted line, supposedly to represent where the geology suggests that the quartz reef would likely occur.
That dotted line goes through my property and almost exactly over my hill where I found the quartz outcrops.
So, how do I go about checking this out for myself. I've seen one map, a few episodes of Gold Hunters and bought a gold pan and dolly for my son when he started bringing quartz home from the hills years ago. I have a mi I excavator, but the hill is too steep for that. Between me and the hill is a deep run-off channel that takes the rain to the local creek, which travels to a major river, the junction of which was only 3km away and once home to an alluvial gold mine that didn't last long because they couldn't find the source up stream.
So, it all sounds promising to me, but then I know as much about gold prospecting and mining as I do about rocket surgery. Some simple advice to get started would be handy.
Thanks,
Lionel

I had an experience on an outcrop like you describe.
There was detectable nuggets all around the outcrop but mainly on one side heading away for about 20 or 30 meters.
Other than that i suggest you dig down to bedrock if it's not too deep and take samples off the top of the bedrock to pan.
I suggest you get a detector because often gold is contained inside the bedrock.

EVIE/BEE said:

I had an experience on an outcrop like you describe.
There was detectable nuggets all around the outcrop but mainly on one side heading away for about 20 or 30 meters.
Other than that i suggest you dig down to bedrock if it's not too deep and take samples off the top of the bedrock to pan.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply and advice!

I can get down to bedrock at the bottom of the hill, as the run-off channel doesn't hold and soil wash-off and there are a lot of large boulders and turns and twists in it where the water would have stopped or slowed down and deposited any little bits of gold.
The hill itself is about 70-100 metres above the channel, with the huge rocks of quartz being about 50-60 metres above.
Would I stick to the run-off channel for the moment to see if there's anything there, or try and get hold of a detector and search around the outcrop, or both?

I'd try the detector.
The gold if any could be anywhere even above the channel.
Remember it's been there a long time.

The best advice I can give you is to read a book by Ion Idriess called Prospecting for Gold. Once you have done that you will have a better idea of how to approach it. The book was written a long time ago, but gold still does what it has always done and so the basic principles are still relevant.
Based on what you describe the first thing I would do is collect some wash from traps in the channel and carefully pan it off to see if contains gold or not, and start from there. Good luck

take the sons pan for a walk ,check every likely looking spot that looks good in the feeder creek
look for a good mixture of rock/gravel sizes (thumb nail size to about cricket ball size) the gold likes to have this sort of company

on the hillside look for any bench lines(they look like contour banks) ,they may have only a 1" drop and have a 4 "or 6" flat run before dropping down again they can be from a foot or 2 long to yards long
but gold likes to have a rest there before continuing its journey with the next heavy rains
they are hard to spot but once you find a few they are a lot easier to spot
happy hunting

You say you have a mines map of the area, but what you need is a geology map which should indicate what type of rock it is that you mention. Your state earth resources department should be able to help you there.
If it is granite or one of its varieties, as your description tends to suggest, I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope as granites are not normally prospective for gold. In Eastern Australia, granite intrusions generally postdate the formation of the much older slates and the gold bearing reefs they contain.
Worse, granite intrusions also contribute to the destruction of those rocks by uplifting them so they are now completely eroded away with only the top of the granite batholith, forced up from below, now remaining exposed on the surface.
It is not impossible to find alluvial gold deposits overlaying granite, but these usually result from the transport of gold from higher eroding gold rocks to lower laying granite areas by significant stream action. Requiring transport by stream action usually means that such gold is typically very fine in nature.
As other have said the only way to be completely sure is to dig up some of the lowest lying gravels on your property and pan them off for signs of any fine gold.

Thanks for your input, advice and knowledge - much appreciated.
I know as much about geology as I do prospecting and rocket surgery, but something you said about shale perked me up a bit. The hill next to the quartz outcrop, and which shares the run-off channel on one side is mostly of rock I would think of as shale. It's grey, flat and hard, and comes in levels or lines of rock that, if you were to strike face on, are incredibly strong, but if you strike between the levels they come apart quite easily - somewhat like slate does, from memory, except you do need a lot of force. Good for road sub-base! It also has many channels of water that seep through the rock/hill, little rivers caused by heavy raid disappear in the rocks, only to come out as soggy paddocks hundreds of metres away. There's not much in the way of granite rhat is obvious to me. The hills here are supposed to be part of a long-extinct volcano crater, which might be helpful information, or not!

The book geology for dummies by Alecia M Spooner
helped me a lot understanding the world of rocks
you can start at the start of the book or just do the sections that interest you

this is the version i have
https://www.amazon.com.au/Geology-D...OpK_wDy6o9tawOf3BxUmUP92CuaRcPxC5fdCnDEAkB6RS

or the new version
https://www.amazon.com.au/Geology-Dummies-Alecia-M-Spooner/dp/1119652871
she may have added more information in the new version

sand surfer said:

take the sons pan for a walk ,check every likely looking spot that looks good in the feeder creek
look for a good mixture of rock/gravel sizes (thumb nail size to about cricket ball size) the gold likes to have this sort of company

on the hillside look for any bench lines(they look like contour banks) ,they may have only a 1" drop and have a 4 "or 6" flat run before dropping down again they can be from a foot or 2 long to yards long
but gold likes to have a rest there before continuing its journey with the next heavy rains
they are hard to spot but once you find a few they are a lot easier to spot
happy hunting

Click to expand...

Well you are between 2 historical gold mines so I wouldnt get too worried about the geology. It is poss there is a discontinuity but you have quartz, proximity and land access so thats all you need to say its worth a solid look.

As Sandsurfer says grab a pan.

Start at the "bottom" of your property where the biggest watercourse exits and work your way back rock bar by rock bar scraping DEEP into every crack. Right to its bottom. Work your way upstream to the top of the watershed.

If more than 1 watershed on your property then do each one starting from where it exits your boundary..... and read Ions book to interpret what you find

Yes it is poss the gold hasnt shed far enough from the reef to reach a watercourse at all but that is very unlikely.

If you do find colour then consider a detector but if you cant even find colour in a pan in any creek/gully then I wouldnt go further.

If you build or get your hands on a little chain crusher that fits an angle grinder you can collect a few small rocks for sampling. Thake a look at the What3words app and use it to grid your area.



You don't need to do it all but the app will give you 3m x 3m squares so select a bucket of small rocks from the squares you select spaced across the area marking each bucket with the three word location. Crush and pan each bucket of stone and you'll know exactly where your samples have come from. If you get colour concentrate your efforts on that area.