Hi All,
Just an update with todays findings - after leaving yesterday there were very small noticeable signals still in the hole
1. So this is the hole at the very start of the find
2. This is roughly how far the hole area was opened and you can see the depth is relatively shallow - at the top of the image where the hammer is - this would be 300mm in depth to the hard base material - 50 or so mm of top soil, not much at all - then gravel wash from marble size to golf ball size roughly 100 to 150mm thick and embedded into the upper clay layer- then the layer of dark chocolate brown clay roughly 100mm thick - and finally the hard Silcrete/Calcrete layer - this had large waterworn quartz boulders upwards of golf ball size. Some much like a half size football
3. On arrival there were faint signals still in various area's - some were difficult to get because the coil needed to be placed on 45 degree, this was mainly due to the hard base material being hard to remove and get a good flat swing.
4. After pulling out a few targets - and sitting down for some lunch I walked a couple of meters downwards just for a 15 minute spell on the hard stuff and noticed a very faint signal some would have dismissed this for ground noise - I always scrape to be sure. And there it was a target with solid signal response
5. Back to the hole - here in these images you can see the hole area with the section that was cracked out - working around the edges after the target is centralized just to be sure not to hit the gold. You can see also in these images which I wanted to capture for you all - the hole - the section cracked out - the gold and the quartz vein running through the Silcrete/Calcrete hard base - today a lot of these targets were starting to appear around this quartz vein.
6. Again I wanted to share this image with some cool colors running through - as well as a nice piece of gold still in its hiding place and finally seeing the light of day possibly for the first time - you can see the red staining from the iron oxide running through the calcium silica material. I would presume that the red iron oxide is leaching up through this silica calcium carbonated material - be good to find some coarse hard sedimentary rock or even some metamorphic rock with thicker iron stone further down. It could be a foot below this hard base or even up to a meter - usually the red is a good signal for close proximity - its just like a color chart with iron staining the further away the lighter it becomes - yellow, orange, red, darker red to brown, brown to very dark almost like black.
With Silcrete it is a hard material composed of silica hence the name silcrete - it is very fine powder of quartz much like quartzite - and over time it turns hard and when mixed close with the iron oxide it becomes a lot harder and was used for making spear heads etc in the very early days by aboriginal tribes.
7. This was todays findings all up total 37 pieces - and the hole is now not showing anymore signal responses, I would be safe to assume there is no more large pieces still in this hole area - and pretty safe that no 4gram plus gold is within a 1 mtr circle radius as this is as far as the hole has had all of the softs and clays removed.
8. This piece of gold taken today was very interesting - I wanted to capture some images for you all to see - at first it looked like a solid cube sticking out of the piece that was cracked out - when arriving home and removing it - it wasnt a cube much like a pyrite cube when you see these they are perfectly square in many cases. Take a look at this piece of gold - the only part protruding outside the silcrete was the cube square section - its pretty unique though perfect square cut sides and a little ball sitting at the base - with another part that appears to be almost like fine wire.
9. Another interesting thing documented for this area is these 3 pieces of gold - First being very reefy found on the first day 3 mtrs away from the main hole area in red clays - second piece which is the piece in the middle - semi water worn found towards the top of the silcrete - the very last piece which is the first in the image - found below the middle piece and it is extreme water worn appearance.
10. Without crushing any pay material removed - this is what was taken with signal response from the detector and any visual pieces while chipping away. Total 86 pieces in 2 1/2 Days of enjoyment
Also the inconsistency in the various type of gold has been very interesting while documenting this - so many variations of reefy sharp pieces suspended in silcrete and not stopped by rock or anything else and very waterworn looking pieces again suspended in silcrete - the gold in different sizes ranged from small pieces to large at different depths throughout this silcrete - very interesting
Next stage with this area will be to work 2 feet one way then 2 feet in another down to the hard base material to see if there is this direction of gold. The direction could not be established in the small section because the gold came from every part in the hole as it opened up
I would also be interested in seeing how thick this silcrete is, usually a low occurs from low spots below - so maybe if this silcrete is only a few hundred mm thick then the next material will be good to see what it is - I would presume it is a conglomerate type wash material and then that would be maybe 1 mtr thick and towards the bottom of the conglomerate would have a high concentration of gold deposits - being larger in size and a lot more gold - then it would no doubt change to a sedimentary material which would be a lot softer much like powder than what I have been cracking at the surface - the surface silcrete as we know is like concrete because of the weathering process - the lower sedimentary would be soft. And at the very bottom conglomerate layer I would see thick hard iron stone dark colored calcium carbonated rock.
Anyway guys - hope you enjoyed the 2 1/2 days write ups and documentation with images.
I will be sure to post up some other stuff in the coming days - even if the direction cant be traced with the strategy in mind - the main thing is to give it a go and see what can be found.
Enjoy