How to start investigating quartz outcrop?

[Lionel66]

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

 

[EVIE/BEE]

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.

 

[Lionel66]

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.

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?

 

[EVIE/BEE]

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

 

[Stingray]

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

 

[sand surfer]

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

 

[Hawkear]

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.

 

[Lionel66]

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!

 

[sand surfer]

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

 

[XLOOX]

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

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.

 

[Moneybox]

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.

 

[Lost Adams]

Lionel, all the above advice is very SOLID! But all you want to establish is there gold or is there no gold!
This is done with your present set of kit, i.e. a gold pan pick and shovel. Go to the lowest part of the
Gully/wash and pan 10 pans to see if you get gold.

If yes then pan upstream till you get No more colors, then drop back to the last creek/wash and go up it for 20m and
see if it has the gold shed. If yes then proceed panning up this wash till you run out again/or run in to the Paystreak/Patch!

Now you have to START the REAL WORK!!!

What you have ESTABLISHED is there is a Possible Paying Deposit that would Warrant Further Expenditure of your Money,
to prove it up and sell or work yourself!!!
Since it is so Close to your Home you and your Son could work it part-time, thereby letting him LEARN at this young age
how to prospect The Right Way and Not Spend Thousands of Dollars Learning the Ropes of This Business.

I have just bought the below Course from Dr. Fagan and Can't give it enough praise for his Down to Earth Approach to this subject.
I only wish I had had it in the 1970's when I started out on this ADVENTURE!!
The book by him "Loaming for Gold in the 21st Century" is also included in the material. You need to check it out.
for the price of 100.00 it is the only place I know of that includes Every Thing you and your son will need to know!!!
https://understanding-geology.com/

The other book I recommend is Sam Raddings Book of Plans 2. It has the plans for a 15lb mini Dry-washer that would make a wonderful addition to your Small Simple Inexpensive Kit for pursuing this Adventure.

https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/SAM-RADDING?cm_sp=brcr-_-bdp-_-author

At a later date you can always take the gold you have found and trade it for a USED Detector of your choice. I say used because it will
take quit a number of Hours to master how to use it and how to tell what it is telling you with it's responses to the targets it finds.
When you and/or your son become proficient with that machine then you can have a Strong UNDERSTANDING on what you need in a machine!!!

Hope this helps you and anyone else reading it.
PS I just turned 74 at the end of September and Became A Great Grandpa on Nov 14th.
G'Day All and have a Happy Productive New Year!!!!!

 

[Lionel66]

Thanks to everyone that has contributed to educating this newbie.
Since I first discovered the quartz outcrop, I have done quite a bit of walking up and down the hill and through the gully, finding some, to me, very interesting information.
The entire hill is covered in quartz, loose bits everywhere (tonnes of it) and I am finding boulders at the gully level that have seams of quartz running through them as well as large lumps of all sorts of coloured quartz in the gully bed.
The quartz also runs up the opposite hill, but I haven't found any outcrops, just stones/rocks with crystal quartz seams in them by the hundred-load.
It appears that one hill is predominantly shale and limestone, while the other hill (and around both sides of the gully) seems to be primarily basalt and quartz.
The property is on a known fault line where quartz gold has been mined within a few kilometres on both sides.
I have just begun digging into the gully bed to take samples for panning, but there is a lot of 'new' soil and large basalt rocks between the surface and where I expected the bedrock or gravel bed to be. Yeah, I know what hard is now! So I'm going to build a path down with my mini excavator and use that!
I have a heap of areas along the gully where it drops levels, back eddies, and has large rocks to slow the flow, so plenty of options to test - probably one every 3 metres for 100 metres.
The good news for me, if there is any gold in this thar hill, the quartz peters out about 20 metres from the neighbours property and looks like it crosses mine diagonally - just like the fault line shows.
So, no pans of the good stuff yet, but my little rock crusher is in the mail, I'm running a 1 1/4 inch water pipe to the gully area which is only 50 metres from my nearest tap, my friend has a Deus 2 metal detector and pointer, sluice with pump, and is the one that told me my property was on the known fault line in the first place. I've attached a few photos of interest (to me). You guys here will know better than I if I should be excited or go fishing.
Cheers,
Lionel

 

[XLOOX]

You are starting the wrong way around.

Even if you have access to them, piped water supplies and excavators are what you need AFTER you find significant gold, not before.

Sluices are not for finding gold either but for recovering gold from a known resource.

Pan, pan pan.
Pan the cracks,
Pan the dropoffs,
Pan the heavy gravels
Pan the main creek
Pan the side gullys
PAN!

Channel your enthusiasm into more samples from more locations. .. this is the key.

Have you processed 200 pans? No? Then you havent even scratched the surface

Bring a few 20l drums of water up closer to the dry gullies with the quad.

Get a 50cm dia HD plastic bucket or box to pan in.

And most importantly, have fun

 

[Lionel66]

Yes, to pan is the plan! But at the moment, I have too much dirt above where the gold level will be, and getting through the basalt rocks with a pick, shovel and hands is very slow work. That's why the excavator. It'll help get me down to the right level faster so I can sample more pans in more spots before moving uphill, if I'm lucky enough to find something to chase. As you can see from the photos, there are plenty of gold traps in the channel to dig up - at least 20-30 of them, as I mentioned. So I'll be doing about 30 holes and sampling them by panning before doing anything else, apart from maybe crack a boulder or two open or crush a bit of smaller quartz samples.
On the hotter days, I'll also probably just do some walking and mapping the hill, the gullies and where it all falls to the gully. On both hills now.
But yes, I do know through comments here that sampling through panning is the best way to start off in finding something if its there. It's just I choose to dig the holes using less energy. Water and sluice means more dirt can be put through faster and pan samples more co concentrated. With the type of gold expected here, I don't expect to see much or anything in the sluice, but just a faster process to get rid of the overburden. I'm looking at flour gold, dust, etc, not nuggets.
But I do appreciate the input!
Cheers,
Lionel

 

[sand surfer]

as XLOOX says pan pan pan
clean every nook and cranny out from the bottom to the top
put the samples in zip lock bags/buckets and log the area where the samples were taken from, pan off later at home with a beer

as XLOOX said once you find the gold areas then go back with the heavy gear and clean it up but you must find the gold first

take a club hammer ,chisel, pry bar /screwdriver and crevice tools with you

in the first photo pry the quartz segments apart and clean everything out of there, even if you have to have a small broom and shovel to get the last of it

second photo do the same with the segmented rocks pry them out and clean everything out

the last and third last photo's
clean all the fine sands off the top ( some people walk past that as all they see is the fine gravels and not the treasure that may be beneath it)
as the water slows down the last thing to be deposited is the fine sands and silts and sometimes that buries the the good ground
sometime in a small creek here i have removed 2 foot deep of fine sands and silt as i know that the goodies are beneath it in that area

it sounds like a lot of work but if you want to find the gold then that's what has to be done
once a bit of a routine sets in it is not so bad
good luck

 

[sand surfer]

as i was writing the above post i did not see your post lionel
if it is flour gold you are chasing buy a good quality loupe about 30x minimum
at a mates place all i get there is flour gold ,i dry pan it down to a tablespoon full in the pan and take it home
i either use a clean up sluice or blue bowl to run the concentrates

 

[Lionel66]

as XLOOX says pan pan pan
clean every nook and cranny out from the bottom to the top
put the samples in zip lock bags/buckets and log the area where the samples were taken from, pan off later at home with a beer

as XLOOX said once you find the gold areas then go back with the heavy gear and clean it up but you must find the gold first

take a club hammer ,chisel, pry bar /screwdriver and crevice tools with you

in the first photo pry the quartz segments apart and clean everything out of there, even if you have to have a small broom and shovel to get the last of it

second photo do the same with the segmented rocks pry them out and clean everything out

the last and third last photo's
clean all the fine sands off the top ( some people walk past that as all they see is the fine gravels and not the treasure that may be beneath it)
as the water slows down the last thing to be deposited is the fine sands and silts and sometimes that buries the the good ground
sometime in a small creek here i have removed 2 foot deep of fine sands and silt as i know that the goodies are beneath it in that area

it sounds like a lot of work but if you want to find the gold then that's what has to be done
once a bit of a routine sets in it is not so bad
good luck

Yes, that is pretty much my plan for most areas of the gully. I have a lot of areas where the water flow obviously slowed down and deposited those sands, so they will be the easiest to start with. But, from the messages I am receiving, being methodical in mapping and recording samples is the priority and, since I'll have to sample everything, I'm likely better off starting at one end and finishing at the other. The quartz in the larger boulders in the photos is but a tiny sample of similar boulders all up the hill, with the outcrop at the top being more quartz than rock. I wish it was spring or autumn!

 

[Moneybox]

I can understand where you're at. Digging with a machine trumps the pick and shovel any day however if you do as they say and check out the nooks and crannies first at least you'll know if there's any gold at all. If you can't get a trace in the tight crevices and under a few boulders where you can get to the base then perhaps you are searching at the end of a rainbow. If you turn up a few specks then you know at least there's gold in the creek so then you can get excited

 

[Lionel66]

I am

I can understand where you're at. Digging with a machine trumps the pick and shovel any day however if you do as they say and check out the nooks and crannies first at least you'll know if there's any gold at all. If you can't get a trace in the tight crevices and under a few boulders where you can get to the base then perhaps you are searching at the end of a rainbow. If you turn up a few specks then you know at least there's gold in the creek so then you can get excited

I am lucky in the sense that my friend is a gold prospector herself, but she normally operates in the known Goldfields and areas mined previously. She has crevice tools and pointer and Daes 2 detector, and done a lot of panning, while I've done so.e walking, picking up rocks and taking photos. The one hole I have dug so far, too over 90 minutes to get 35cm down, basalt rock after rock, and still black soil. So, yes, patience and hard work. It's just like rhe 1850s all over again!