shoalhaven large flake and pickers???

[yellowfever1986]

Hey guys im only new to prospecting been going about 12 months now im just curious as to wether people have aquired large flakes and pickers out of the shoalhaven river??? I frequent the area fairly often and im familiar with the flour gold there but after a recent trip down there paninng off my cons ive found 2 pickers weighing .05 and .07 and a large flake/nugget weighing .3 of a gram ive found this to be quite unusual for the dhoalhaven as it is mainly fine flood gold anybody got thoughts on this??? Ill post a couple of pics of the gold on this topic tonight when im home from work....

 

[Guest]

No depending on where you go, you will get gold like that from the shoalhaven.

 

[jamie]

yeah i have found some like that there too mate, well done

 

[HeadsUp]

yup

i even found some crystaline gold there taking shelter inside a chunk of quartz .

there are two different types of gold in that area , and if you do some homework you will also find that some very large nuggets were found on that river system back in the goldrush days ( 90 and 230 ounces from memory ).

 

[yellowfever1986]

http://i692.photobucket.com/albums/vv284/thomasjones1986/IMG_0320.jpg
http://i692.photobucket.com/albums/vv284/thomasjones1986/IMG_0303.jpg
these are the photos i have of everything that was got in the shoalhaven last trip from the flour gold to the pickers and the large flake/nugget i never knew that there was larger gold to be had everyone i had spoken to had told me that there was nothing but flour gold to be had from the shoalhaven so you can imagine my surprise to find these three pieces in the cons with the flour gold...

 

[G0lddigg@]

Nice colour

 

[razorAKAgolddigger]

Hi has any body been fossicking up browns mountain in shoalhaven ? Email address removed, against forum rules.

 

[shivan]

Have not tried panning, but have been out that way looking for jasper. A lot of private property.

 

[DrDuck]

Hi has any body been fossicking up browns mountain in shoalhaven ? Email address removed, against forum rules.

As a starting point, check out Bonzle and see what mines were in the area.

It turns out there are a few in the general vicinity. Click on the mine name for some info.

http://www.bonzle.com/c/a?a=p&p=36055&cmd=sp

Then look in the DIGS data base, using some of the town names around the area, to get whatever dept of mines report exist for the area.

 

[Ballina1]

Hi Yellowfever

Most of the sand in Shoalhaven is small flakes or "fly "specs" however I have found a few good pickers (nugletts) in crevices near Oallen Ford. They are few and far between. The sand flats near the bridge have been done over for 150 years so mostly fine. Most of the accessible crevices have been done over so it is often better to dig away the surface sand in an area near slate and find "hidden" / buried crevices. Try under compacted car tracks (but be sure to restore) as these get less attention than other areas. There was a mined area NE of the crossing and the gravel there might be worth an experiment but I haven't done that myself.

You can access the river (4WD or legs) SE of the crossing and crevices there also run N-S so not as good as a catchment in theory but this area probably has had less attention than the crossing.

You can also walk SW of the crossing (around the corner to the west). The western bank and beyond has been sand-mined for gold ("Croker's Mint"), as has the eastern side of the river ("Pauls Workings") where high up you will find a pit with gravels representing the ancient river bed. You could try crevicing in that area also but it is a bit of a walk along the river now that the super-fence has been erected around the property to the south.

Further upstream you will find some other locations. Old Bombay Crossing might be worth a look.

 

[yellowfever1986]

The picker and the flake that were in the pics come out of a layer of clay of what appered to be decomposing granite. From my understanding from what others have told me and reading online majority of the fine flood gold in the shoalhaven has shed from granite.. i think it unlikely the larger pieces i found came from this source but were more likely trapped on the sticky layer some time ago. Maybe after being washed out of the mongarlowe river.either way they are the biggest pieces ive found to date and im pretty happy with that i will definetly be going back to the spot on the shoalhaven they came from again i also noticed that i found more lead pieces in that spot then anywhere else ive been so is definetly a low pressure zone when the river is in flood to have more than 70 pieces of lead varying sizes after running the banker for only 3 hours was a shock....

 

[Ballina1]

Most of the fine gold came out of decomposing granite. There were quartz reefs in Braidwood & Majors Creek areas, evidenced by loads of quartz rocks in the river. Some were gold bearing. If you are scientifically minded there are some interesting papers you can Google, download & read:
"Evidence of a Granite Related Source for the Braidwood-Majors Creek-Araluen Goldfields" (McQueen)
"Cainozoic Landform Evolution on the Shoalhaven Plain, with special reference to the alluvial & aoelian history over the last 45 million years" (JF Nott)
- A big read but highly worthwhile- you will learn lots
"Prospectus of Hogden's Shoalhaven Gold"
Also look for papers or books written by Barry McGowan