12 Weeks To Find First Gold (Persistence Pays).

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Hi All,

Another couple of hours out today - I have postponed the other spot due to travel distance and walking - looking to arrange a few days that way and will get some pics up for you all for findings or anything of interest.

Today I went to an area which I found many years ago and hasnt had an excessive amount of prospectors swinging over it for the last 10 years - its just one of those spots that most times that I visit something amazing always pops up - its an area that is super quiet - well its noisy in certain areas from the mineralization iron oxides, iron stone pebbles from conglomerate mass in certain area's.

In this area you can swing for a few hours and not hit any targets at all - its the sort of area that takes much patience - sometimes digging not even one target is more annoying than unearthing the odd piece of rust. This area though when a target is hit the chances of it being gold is the highest probability area that I have found in many years of prospecting.

So I ventured out and when I arrived today and started in a very noisy ground area and walked downwards of this slight incline area, not hitting any targets at all after roughly 1 1/2 hours I noticed this spot which wasnt familiar to me in the many years of hitting this area - I thought to spend some time in this spot and clean away any large boulders stopping me from getting maximum depth and coverage.

1. Notice the larger rocks some are only 40mm and smaller I always get these out of the way to get the coil flat on the ground, even a rock wedged in the ground and protruding I will just kick it out - this could be the only thing stopping you from gaining that extra 20mm to hit that faint target needed to catch your attention - in the picture with the red circle see the marking in the ground - this was a large piece of conglomerate moulded into the ground and sticking up roughly 80mm above the ground surface - and this is where I hit that nice signal - lets see what comes from taking the little effort to kick it out
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2. And there it is just on the red clay base at the very bottom of the wash material - I dug another 50mm out just to see if the ground had changed and it was solid red clay.
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3. I also hit some signals in conglomerate pieces just below the surface - these things are scattered everywhere from the old timers digging and chipping through it, I always check this because I know from experience here that it is also a host material with gold. When I swung over a few with mid tones and kept them just to see if there is possibly a sub grammer inside - I hit one that was solid enough to know it was gold immediately - I didnt take a pic in the field - when I got home I scrubbed the piece with the trusty old scrub brush - I thought I would have to break it open to see the yellow - when I rinsed away the dirty water while spinning it around - there it was looking at me - Its great getting pieces like this with the gold already visible
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4. This is the first piece cleaned and also has some iron stone attached to the gold.
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If there is anything interesting in the other pieces I will post it up - they look like very high concentrated iron oxide rock - 2 are black to the deep purple color and the other is the darker red much like crimson. With only small traces of quartz attached

Regards M.G
 
Another successful day mg the little nug looks very water worn but after reading all your posts and spending yhe day with you i am not surprised as i know that you look for ancient water ways good on ya mate keep it up .
 
To all that are going into the fields in the search for gold over the weekend - I hope you all walk across that spot in the ground and you unearth some gold.

I wanted to share these pictures with you all - always good to look at some rocks and geological formation from when the lands were covered in a lot of water aeons ago. As we can only see what is up on the surface and getting images like these in area's we hunt helps to establish the ground levels, layers, geological makeup etc

I mentioned in some earlier posts its also a good idea to establish where the grounds become shallow for the potential opportunity of gold coming out around those shallow layers. By doing this it can help get closer to a source whether it is primary or secondary.

Hope you like the images

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Be safe and well - happy hunting :)
 
How amazing really, to dig in amongst hundreds of thousands of years of sedimentary rock to find the old creek level and pick the guts out of it from below ,... imagine really, how easy that would be to follow through the earth without getting lost ,... unless you came across a sheer zone and just couldn't pick it back up again for some inexplicable reason. Joyful wonderment revealed M.G :D 8)
Unless I'm reading a lot more into it(ha).
 
Hi All,

Only just returned from CNC Machining some parts for a customers LS1 Engine, thought to sit here and add today findings in the fields - A few posts ago I mentioned about an undulated area among some workings - I wanted to clean out the base and give it a good swing over. I ventured out there today

1. After cleaning the area - putting in roughly 15 minutes to remove the bulk of the sticks, branches and larger rocks - you can see in these images the area with pile of sticks removed - while detecting the area I started with a section and kept raking the base as I moved from the higher part to the lower part by scraping any of the looser smaller sticks and compost type material - moving in sections as I progressed - after putting this small amount of effort in I didnt hit any gold in this area after getting that little ball piece of gold the other day here in the upper part of this undulated area. I got maybe 3 signals and all were very small pieces of rust and an aluminium can which I knew was there from the other day.
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2. This area wasn't going to beat me - I persisted from the lower parts along the sides and all the way around the upper surfaces of this area where all the dirt that was removed from this area, the material that they pretty much throw up on the sides until they hit their best material - the thought of not hitting anything in the lower section brings us to the assumption that there may still be some small gold up on the sides where they threw up the top material as they worked to the clay level or rock bottom. Instead of walking away its great to thoroughly search bottoms sides tops so you know that you have thoroughly searched and even then if no targets are found you can walk away knowing you stuck to your rules and hit every part as good as you could.

As I worked around the upper level along the sides from the top - I got maybe half way down this area and hit a louder than usual signal closer to the surface - and when I dug it out maybe only 2 to 3 inches below surface and sprinkled the material on the coil - there it was a nice heavy sound - solid little nugget
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3. Then another sound very faint just in front of the previous target - it was only that faint that it sounded again like a ground noise but enough to break the threshold and raise that reason for inspection - even a slight scrape with the boots can do wonders by removing a few loose stones to get that little bit closer - sound was still there and then scraped away 20 or so mm to hear the solid signal response. This target was roughly 8 inches below - I have read a thesis that gold nuggets grow by themselves and this proves it - the little sucker had roots coming off it
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After this area I ventured off for some more exploration in this same area within 50mtr radius just to read the grounds some more to see if there were any area's that stood out to be more rich than others. Noticed some more good spots for a good go over - and hit some rust nuggets along the walk - a nice rust nugget 1 1/2 feet deep in a white mullock

4. These were after cleaning and one piece has some nice little quartz attached
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After some more thorough searching around this undulation and upper surface no more signals with the 14"DD, and exploring around this area - as it hit roughly 6:00pm I ventured over to an area where there is some quartz outcropping and wanted to inspect and take some samples to test for any gold deposits - after breaking through some with some nice iron oxide inclusion and getting between the layers - I pulled a few quartz pieces with yellow - I will need to inspect some more for possibilities of gold within

Here you can see the top right of the quartz - I will need to check with loupe or get some bulk sample and crush and pan.

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All in all great day - weather was excellent
 
what an inspiration and fantastic read. i used to think i had some idea about this caper but i now realize i am probably in about grade 2 and that i only just scratch the surface. i hope to increase my education next saturday.Jim
 
Once again mg a great post I agree the weather was good and the flys loved it too but no mossies yesterday which was good lol thanks for the posts mate
 
Pirate pete said:
Once again mg a great post I agree the weather was good and the flys loved it too but no mossies yesterday which was good lol thanks for the posts mate

Thanks Pete, You hit the nail on the head regarding the flies - weather at its best, wet as - the first glimpse of sun flies all over the place.
 
Just wanted to update thread with sample crushing today - I didnt get a chance to head out into the fields today mainly just wanted to have a somewhat relaxing day around home.

I thought to crush some of the sample pieces taken out of the recent hole of gold discovered - the sedimentary clays / calcrete material appeared to have dried out well over the last week or so. I only have 2 bags taken from the hole only what appeared to be the better material where the other concentration was located - I think after panning now I might take some samples around the discovered hole when I actually get the time to take away 2 or 3 feet of overburden top soils and loose gravels from around the hole.

Great weather we had - nice and warm to setup the water tub for panning some material. After setting up all the tools to crush with and getting my gold pans ready - I started to crush handfuls of the sediment material - again I mentioned a somewhat relaxing day - wow swinging on the crow bar to crush this stuff just goes to show how much effort the old timers put in with their work and the challenges they faced when performing this type of work. It brings us back to the days of the old, I guess on large scale they wouldnt be crushing by hand and using the aids of special machinery to perform this work - simply dig it up with the D9 and Excavator load into the appropriated machines crushers etc - then process through the large scale machines

And if the pay material was not beneficial for the old timers little specs in the bottom I guess they didnt fuss a great deal until there were decent size nuggets. Or a high concentration of little nuggets in the bottom of their pans.

After running through 3 pans of material see below results

1. Here in these images are the samples in the bag - along with some of the larger material classified out from the material that I panned out.
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2. Once I had panned away the lights from the top - I wanted to try to capture these images as I swirled the material to expose any heavies in the bottom - trying to do this while holding the camera was a bit of a challenge - but managed to get them for you all. And when you see the colors in the bottom at the first time after panning this light away - is a great feeling - nothing at all then all of a sudden there it is. This pan proved to be a nice lot of colors per pan - I think I counted 25 or 26
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3. I took the pan inside to get lower light for you all to see as well.
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4. Pan number 2 - also has some nice colors not quite as many as previous but the material I crushed was slightly less in volume
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5. Pan number 3 and the last for the day - the bag of sample still has maybe enough for 6 more pans and bag number 2 is full - also the material still sitting at the location is another good batch removed from this hole
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6. This is after the 3 pans of material - just a guesstimation there would be close to 0.8g - 1.0g
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After seeing the amount of colors per pan in this batch of sample - I will be definitely looking to see if this source of finer gold continues and how big an area the concentration is - obviously the depth of the next level of material. So many things to look at after finding these results. It comes down to how much work you put in for the rewards that can be achieved.

Hope you enjoy something a bit different rather than dig hole find gold dig hole find more gold - not that its a bad thing digging a higher percentage of gold targets than rusty relics.

Enjoy and hope you like the pics.
 
What's not.to like this is enthralling . I think we need to chang your name to "Midas". Seriously you are an inspiration when so many are saying all the gold has gone, you give us mere mortals hope thank you
 
MG, I've not tried to dolly our species yet. I have to make a dolly pot first and I still have enough jobs ahead of me.

I'm just curious about the size of your crushed stone. Did you crush it far enough to ensure that you got all the gold? I thought you'd have to pulverise it to a much smaller size.

Phil
 
Moneybox said:
MG,

I'm just curious about the size of your crushed stone. Did you crush it far enough to ensure that you got all the gold? I thought you'd have to pulverise it to a much smaller size.

Phil

Hi Phil,

thanks for your reply - because the material is so far alluvial deposits within the calcrete sediment and not within quartz, trying to crush the calcrete to a fine powder and anything that is classified out is placed in a separate pile majority of this was little pieces of quartz - I will again crush the classified material to see if at all there are traces of missed gold in some of the sediments that didnt crush due to the quartz not allowing - majority of the crush sample is a fine powder and the classification size for this batch was 4mm size - reasonably large for the test when the other material that dries out from panning off I will further crush to see again if these contain gold.

1. I would say that the dry classified 4mm plus still contains a small amount of gold - I will post up any findings on this

2. Any material run through panning which is under 4.0mm, I will also crush again to see if any of the sediment pieces still contain gold after the initial panning.

I am hoping to trace the source if there is a potential reef in close proximity I will take some samples from 2mtrs, 5mtrs 10mtrs in each direction and see if I can source a larger concentration. If the samples keep coming back positive in a certain direction I will just keep following - If the samples bring back some positive results of larger than these sample gold sizes that is - then I will simply crush to a certain classified size to ensure that all gold recovery is 100% accurate - if all goes well I will bring out the bigger tools from the arsenal. All manual hand tools

If I find a primary source and the gold is within quartz/ironstone or rock hosted - then it will definitely be crushed and screened with anything from 0.8mm to 1.5mm depending on concentration. The only issue is being regulated under miners rights, dig hole fill hole, dig hole fill hole, sample size per day etc etc - if all goes to plan then this will change.

If the samples bring back negative results over a small area then I would be safe to assume this concentration was simply deposited into a dip and doesnt mean a close proximity of primary gold - it may have traveled KM's to get there and simply deposited pockets along its way. On to find the next piece or pocket :)

But in saying this I have good feelings only because of the coarse gold within this area it is very reefy and not at all traveled over millions of years tumbling around and getting excessive water worn appearance. Many things to take into account - is this a younger deposit from a reef and there is an ancient deposit meters below this from the same reef but deposited millions of years before this lot - so many things to take into account - that's why documenting every little detail can provide exceptional results when laid out on the table. And studying the gold pulled out at the levels

Hope this answers your question - apologies for the longer than usual reply

And also thanks Reynard - it would be good to have the MIDAS Touch - hopefully showing my findings and sharing it with you all can bring many inspirations to all prospectors and also provide them with the overview of sometimes we hit it easy and yeah it takes some work, walking, exploring, digging - work hard and never expect anything to be handed to you on a silver platter - or in our case it should be a gold platter.

Just be thorough and I can tell you the old timers left more than you know - and the early days of the release of the SD Machines all the stories of the guys getting all the gold in the 70's and 80's - only where they walked is what they got if they felt like digging it, they had the same problems we all face digging rubbish. Today we are still pulling out big nuggets - another in Ballarat the other day 600grams

The other day I walked around a white mullock heap with 7 or so previous detectorist dig holes - I wanted to prove that I could be more thorough on this big mullock and I walked around it and hit every little angle and then boom a beautiful deep soft faintly noticeable target - was only rust but It was my rust and I found it.

Lets see - "The joys of our Gold journey"
 
Bloody hell MG!!! It has taken me about 7 evenings, 3 lunchtimes and a few sneaky reads during quiet times at work but I am finally up to date.

Great read and great finds. Thanks and congrats.

Just got to keep up with the daily posts now ;)
 
Hi All,

Just updating thread with another few hours out today - I went back to where I previously posted about the undulated area that I cleaned out with no luck but managed to get those pieces on the upper surface from the material which was removed by the old timers.

After walking around the area and enjoying how peaceful it is out there - nice cool change after yesterday's early heat. I was looking at the test holes and the way they run with the contour of the grounds looking for any signs that really stand out the only thing that took my attention after finding this small gully type section - its not really a gully but more of a hot spot which had gold and was worked in the line to follow the gold. As I walked around and noticed a lot of material to the high side of the gully and looks as though it was a continuation and over time covered gradually as they worked downwards.

I thought to test this area out to see what could be found - after unearthing about 4 very nice looking rust nuggets and good size to them at reasonable depth - most were that very faint but solid signal response - enough to make anyone dig them.

I continued to be thorough in covering the ground moving anything that was going to impede. As I worked along some top material downside of a small hole area, I had a signal - after kicking away any loose material on the surface I again went over the target - time to dig - before I done this I swung over the target at different speeds to see that the response was there and I increased speed until the detector couldn't interpret a target. I was swinging pretty damn fast until the target was not easily distinguished.

1. In the top 2 images you can see in the distance where I marked with the arrow - the undulated gully type section - it runs from right to left on the screen. And in the second image again in the distance and also the hole that I dug. If you look to the left of the hole that I dug - where all the sticks are - this looks to be a continuation into the lower undulation - maybe the original gold was traced in this line and over time filled as they worked down. I would be interested in cleaning these sticks away and trying to get some targets here.
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2. Target out and on the coil - 6 inches below surface
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3. Nice little piece of the elusive yellow that we all like to see
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4. Directly around the other side of the large tree - there was another very faint little signal - only just noticeable - I mean the slightest threshold break which always triggers the mind into brushing away the surface. As you can see in the images scraped away the compost type material sticks etc and the top soil away to get the target more noticeable - and this target was only 1 inch into the red material.
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5. Target on the coil - and again a very little piece piece of gold - almost like a mouse poo - just need to find the mouse that lays these and train him hard - its no jack and the beanstalk goose laying golden egg size - but hey its still gold and it all adds up
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6. And all cleaned up after returning home
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Also today after getting these 2 pieces - I spent some time in the Gold Hole and took samples in 4 locations - I have the grid setup for the material taken - marked with numbers - after the material has dried out I will crush away and see what the pan reveals. This is roughly 4 sections of the gridding or loaming area that I am focussing on for stage 1 of the loam tests. The grid consists of 25 loam tests

Also have roughly a bucket of material still sitting there from the initial digging into the calcrete which should have some good size gold once panned.

Enjoy all
 
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