Myself and my boys came back from Tuena a few weeks back. We test panned for the morning session, had lunch then setup the high banker once we found a location that produced at least 5 specks a pan. We are only relatively new to the game and Tuena so we are still learning to read where the concentrated gold is likely to be in the stream, creek, river.
I left the Walbanker, hoses, shovels, buckets on the Tuena Creek but carried my Honda WX15 pump back to the car, I cant afford to lose that! We figured we were a fair way from direct public access and no one should visit the creek between 5pm when we left and 9am the next morning.
Panning is quite tough on the hands, back and knees. We setup the Walbanker ASAP to process material by volume rather than quality due to our lack of experience. I learn something new each time we go out.
Apart from that we love using the Walbanker, there's something about the anticipation of the cleanout. How much gold did we get? Did we get any larger chunks? Are we digging a good spot?
I would not setup for 1 speck a pan and would continue to test pan locations till we got better results. Having said that at Nundle on the Peel, we setup for an afternoon session to try and beat the lack of gold by volume, did not get much, less than 1/4 gram but more than panning and a bit easier on the body.
