2022...

[user 22230]

MB no issue at all The stars may all align next trip PS re the boat ........................ shifty bugger

 

[Moneybox]

Ok I'm back. My toolbox here is working so I have no excuses



Before leaving Burketown we visited this hot artisan bore. It's good to see that they haven't capped them all. Last time we crossed the NT to QLD border on the Plenty Highway (dirt track) we missed the hot bore there that used to spew hot water down a drain until it could be scooped out at a usable temperature. The old steam engine was gone too. It had travelled from the UK and the only job it had performed was the sinking of that bore before laying to rest on site for the rest of its life. Now I've got a bit off track haven't I?



I think I stated before that we headed west from there on the bone jarring Carpentaria Highway (yeah another dirt track) that led us over some nice freshwater streams with good fishing and into Borroloola on the Mcarthur River. It’s been 45 years since Merv and I travelled through this area together. It was a real nostalgia trip to sit on the edge of the same stream that we’d pulled fish from that many years ago. Some of the places we visited was just to revive those old happy memories. That’s not to say that our travels these times are any less happy but it was great to do a retake of those times when we were two single guys footloose and fancy free.



I might have been bogged in this same patch of loose river gravel too
We stood on the old concrete river crossing and pulled a big Queen Fish out just as we'd done 45 years earlier. Then we wandered downstream looking for the spot where we had the 12'x12' marque tent erected. We used to hang our fish fillets from the sides of the tent to dehydrate them. It was just a few metres from the waters edge but these days you'd end up crock bait.



All we wanted was a quick shower and a hot meal



The Daily Waters Pub has been luring travelers since 1930 and is a great place to stop, burn a few bucks and enjoy the eye opening collections.



Just up the road we stopped for some homemade icecream and a selfie as young blokes do



We wanted to catch up with DaveNT and Glenn01 for a little prospecting. It was good to catch up but somebody had beaten us to the gold. Just like fishing, should have been here last week I think we barely managed a gram between us. A few days prospecting in the Territory and we were ready to swap it for snorkeling with the fish at Berry Springs.



It was a brief visit, a quick catch-up with the locals and then we headed for WA....

 

[Jaros]

Ah memories.

 

[Moneybox]

It's good to travel but nice to be back in familiar territory. We did a bit of sight seeing on the way through but kept moving until we arrived back in the Pilbara.



Merv had never tried his hand at panning so while we had this little pond to work with we gave it a go. I figured it might be better to pan a sample from each gully before spending all day searching with the metal detector. We started out with a half bucket of clay from the bottom of a dig hole where I'd previously found a couple of nuggets. It was successful with another four little nuggets turning up in the pan. Next time I went to the mouth of the gully while Merv dug to the bottom of a small waterfall, all in the same gully. These next two half buckets turned up nothing even though I'd spent a couple of days digging small nuggets above and below the area where we took the sample dirt. I call that a failure so I'm back to searching by metal detector.


Merv hung around for a week but it was just to get a bit more gold to cover some of his travel costs. It seemed very quiet out there on my own after such a good trip but I was in the same situation. I'd spend a bit on fuel so I wanted to turn up home with a bit of gold as well.



Communication is quite good here if you climb high enough. Look at all those lovely hills and gullies, such a lot of walking and swinging but in mostly perfect weather conditions.



I slipped into the local store to give the CCard a bit of shock. Some things (everything) are a bit expensive here but then it's just another nugget



Sometimes what you buy is not all that fresh. This item was nearly a year beyond its use by date.




I took the opportunity to do a bit of washing too while I had plenty of water.



I'm having so much trouble with this page I'm going to quit before I lose it all.

 

[Moneybox]

I noticed that out of date soft drink was not on the list so I though perhaps I got for free



No such luck. It was $5.50 but I guess you'd have to understand that they paid interest on that money for at least a couple of years before it was sold.



The sunrises are just like the sunsets without the hills. The difference is the temperature, I always went out rugged up gloves and all.



You might have noticed, I usually have roll protection on the quad. Before venturing off on my lap around the big block in the little Benz I had to remove it. The van is just not high enough to allow for the roll bar and I didn't have the time to design and fit a new one.

This doesn't look like a dangerous spot to be in and really it shouldn't have been. I entered a gully with no clear area to cross. When I swung sharply left the right front wheel mounted a clump of Spinifex leaving the left front wheel about 400mm in the air. As I slowly crept forward the right rear wheel mounted the spinifex and sent the left front wheel to the ground causing the quad to tilt sharply left. I had my foot on the ground but just couldn't hold the weight and had to let it land on the ground.

As it was lying there the engine was still ticking over at idle as if nothing was wrong. I just had to haul it back onto its feet and dig into the box for new zip-ties to remount the rear box.



Merv had gone home by then so I didn't venture back into the hills unless I had to make a phone call. Once again I feel the GPX6000 did nothing to help my overall gold finds for the trip.



I found lots of pieces but the overall weight is just not there. The 6000 detects lots of targets that you simply cannot ignore so the whole day is spent retrieving microscopic targets instead of searching further afield for the bigger ones.



As the rain settled in and I'd already been a couple of months on the road it was time to head for home. It was a good trip away but would have been more enjoyable if Mrs M had been there too. Perhaps next time

 

[Moneybox]

Yesterday I took Tonka up to the big dirt pile and pulled out a heap of the big rocks.



It's not easy because I just have a straight cutting edge on the bucket so it tries to move the rocks and the fine dirt at the same time. All the dirt has gold.



At least it was dry enough so Tonka and Goldilocks went out for a frolic in the dirt.

View attachment Vibration.MOV

I've always had trouble clearing the screen but I've recently changed the rubber mountings to coil springs and the result is that the gravel and rocks instantly roll off the bottom.



I only processed about thirty tons (half rock) before it all played out like one of those reality shows.



The loader blew a hydraulic hose on the brake circuit so excitement soon turned to disappointment

 

[grubstake]

Yesterday I took Tonka up to the big dirt pile and pulled out a heap of the big rocks.
It's not easy because I just have a straight cutting edge on the bucket so it tries to move the rocks and the fine dirt at the same time. All the dirt has gold.

Maybe you need to try a sieve bucket, like the demolition contractors use for final site cleanup. Everything smaller than a brick falls through the slots in the grille, while everything else gets trucked away for landfill.

 

[Moneybox]

Maybe you need to try a sieve bucket, like the demolition contractors use for final site cleanup. Everything smaller than a brick falls through the slots in the grille, while everything else gets trucked away for landfill.

Yes grubstake I've considered other options. I can pick up some old road grids. They are made from railway line and already set up in panels so pretty easy to erect a grizzly but it's just another process. I would have to sort the rocks out one way or the other in one process then load the dryblower in another, double handling. The simplest method would be to construct a grizzly frame above the mesh so as I load the dryblower the rocks just tumble off first before they hit the mesh.

In the end I decided it was quicker simpler and easier just to load them on and put up with a bit of damage, perhaps replace the mesh screen and the aluminium front panels before too long as well.

 

[Moneybox]

Last night I found this little beauty unreserved at the auction. The problem is that I know my only chance of getting it is if I send Mrs M around to look at it while she's in Perth. If she actually gets in I know she'll want one. Then there's just the problem of payment



Then all I need is this little bucket, also unreserved but overall it would have to pay its way and I'm not sure it would.

 

[Jaros]

Good find mate.

 

[Simmo]

That rock bucket would be awesome for getting rid of the oversize and leaving the dirt??!

 

[Moneybox]

That rock bucket would be awesome for getting rid of the oversize and leaving the dirt??!

I think it would go well with the little skid steer but I only have a limited stockpile of this rocky dirt. It was on the lease when I pegged it but it seems to have come from another location. I need to take the time to calculate the tonnage. I'm getting a pretty consistent 0.2g to the tonne. That's just 200g for 1000 tonnes however if I have 10,000T then that's 2000 x $80 = $160,000 and that would certainly buy me a good secondhand skid steer

 

[Mackka]

Hey Moneybox is .2g per tonne viable? Seems to me a lot of work and expense for little return? Mackka

 

[Moneybox]

Hey Moneybox is .2g per tonne viable? Seems to me a lot of work and expense for little return? Mackka

Yes it's all about tonnage. The running costs are very low so I just have to pump a lot of dirt through. Yesterday was a bad day because I blew a hydraulic hose on the loader, my first ever hose failure. My nephew made a new one and put it on Toll yesterday, hopefully I'll get it today but I expect to see it tomorrow.

I only got 2g for my effort yesterday but my day was done by 7:30am.

 

[Moneybox]

Mackka, I'd like to see a comparison of return on cost for my dryblower setup vs the average GPX6000 or GPZ7000 that are out there each weekend. I think I would be ahead

 

[Moneybox]

After my week with the Perth branch of APLA on their camp near Meekatharra my brother Merv joined me again while we looked over a nearby "E" lease for a local mining company. That reminds me, I haven't reported back to them yet....

Link to my week with APLA; https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/threads/a-week-out-with-apla.40252/

I only had to head about 20km east from the APLA camp following the vermin proof barrier fence and Merv had to come from Busselton. To make it easier to meet up I took a trip over there on the quad on the the last day of camp to check the access road and record coordinates on my proposed camp spot.

We were enthusiastic about having a free go at a large expanse of fresh ground. We thought there'd be a good chance of getting onto a decent patch of gold. It never happened. We spend days fighting hotrocks. We both gave up on the GPX6000's, Merv changed to the GPZ7000 and I fitted the 14" Elite coil onto the GPX4500. This virtually eliminated the hotrock problem. Both detectors performed much better in the difficult conditions and because of the bigger coils we easily covered a lot more ground.



We spent the first three days searching what looked like really good ground with a good mix of rusty quartz and iron, very little rubbish and absolutely no gold. I had packed the 40" Coiltek drag coil but I never bothered to set it up. The map given to me by the mining company showed a detecting area so on the forth day we headed for that. We just needed to see some colour to encourage us to keep battling.



By that time I'd had enough of swinging the 14" coil and went back to the GPX6000. The detecting area was mostly quartz anyway so the hotrocks were not a real problem. Merv also went back to the 6000. I spent that day carefully working my way through the rocky areas and along the random scrapings.



I still couldn't raise a nugget but Merv pinged a 1.95g nugget right at the end of that forth day.



The following day we hit the ground with renewed confidence. Merv went back to using the 7000 and chained the immediate area around where he found the nugget and I worked areas not too far off.

After five days and one nugget we decided to call it quits. I appreciated to offer from the mining company but in the end it wasn't worth the effort. I'm much better off doing my own research and choosing the ground to detect.

 

[Moneybox]

Today I got into a project that's been waiting for me for a while.



I cut the top out of the gas bottle a long while back but got distracted with too many other things.

Today I found the old or perhaps new 15:1 gearbox that I've been carrying around for a few decades. I knew it was going to be useful for something one day

I grabbed the washing machine motor from Cuebunno. It's 185W 1300 rpm so that gives me a rotation speed of 86 rpm which I think is going to do the job.



My black sand is building up so this should help me process it. It needs a bit more work to finish it off but you get the idea.

 

[Davent]

Mad scientist!

 

[Moneybox]

View attachment Tumbler 3.MOV

I'll do a bit of a video later.

 

[Moneybox]

View attachment Tumbler 4.MOV

I got a bit impatient so I threw some more sand in and a bit caustic soda. I'll rinse that shortly and add a bit of mercury to see what's in there

Warning - Restricted hazardous chemicals/dangerous goods use or discussion isn't endorsed by Forum Management. Individuals using any hazardous chemicals/dangerous goods do so at their own risk/s and need to ensure their own legislative compliance.