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- Mar 14, 2016
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Hey Gold Diggers,
I have an interesting developing story to share after our prospecting plans to go further west gold prospecting over Easter fell foul due to intermittent battery warning light problem (the signs of a possible failing alternator) in my 4WD turned everything our plans completely around.
Frustrated because we had "an itch we couldn't just scratch" driving us nuts all weekend, my prospecting partner Krystals told me of a new housing estate out of town where she had seen some newly constructed housing pads with soil containing lots of quartz and lots of red iron oxide. The site is also in the zone of a major fault line where many other gold lodes have previously found in hard rock formations in the far North.
All the signs you look for when locating a potential gold deposit were here apparently. So we did a tenure check and found that it is a unoccupied freehold land and not under any native title, state forest reserve or national park. So we figured that there was no harm or a need to get permission to do a bit of metal detecting so we headed up for a bit of scout around.
Driving up through the area of interest I missed a bedrock feature at first that had been opened up in a cut into the side of a hill. But after doing a U turn to come back down the hill I spotted a really good sign at the base of a hill. In the bedrock there was quartz veins with loads of heavy mineralisation occurring. So I grabbed the Minelab Eureka Gold Detector with the Coiltek 15" Goldseeker coil to check out if there was any sort of a lead coming from the area where there was rotting quartz.
I ran over the area at 20khz over the ground surrounding this possible lead and found nothing, but then I found a moderate signal right at the base of the vein itself. So I switched the eureka to 6.4khz with mild discrimination turned on and it started barking at me every time I passed the coil over this spot.
So we dug about a 8 inches to clear away overburden before we started pulling out solid chunks of fragmented broken quartz which we now need to dolly up and test. We pulled out other materials including red clay which we later panned but still no colour in the pan yet but that is still no confirmation of no gold as any flake or finer gold may have already gone deeper.
The signal is still there and is barking louder now than ever so it beckons further investigation. So we have plans to go back with a crowbar and go a bit deeper over the next few days to see what we can find. One thing I know is certain, this isn't just a button or a piece of old junk. So wish us luck on this one.
I have an interesting developing story to share after our prospecting plans to go further west gold prospecting over Easter fell foul due to intermittent battery warning light problem (the signs of a possible failing alternator) in my 4WD turned everything our plans completely around.
Frustrated because we had "an itch we couldn't just scratch" driving us nuts all weekend, my prospecting partner Krystals told me of a new housing estate out of town where she had seen some newly constructed housing pads with soil containing lots of quartz and lots of red iron oxide. The site is also in the zone of a major fault line where many other gold lodes have previously found in hard rock formations in the far North.
All the signs you look for when locating a potential gold deposit were here apparently. So we did a tenure check and found that it is a unoccupied freehold land and not under any native title, state forest reserve or national park. So we figured that there was no harm or a need to get permission to do a bit of metal detecting so we headed up for a bit of scout around.
Driving up through the area of interest I missed a bedrock feature at first that had been opened up in a cut into the side of a hill. But after doing a U turn to come back down the hill I spotted a really good sign at the base of a hill. In the bedrock there was quartz veins with loads of heavy mineralisation occurring. So I grabbed the Minelab Eureka Gold Detector with the Coiltek 15" Goldseeker coil to check out if there was any sort of a lead coming from the area where there was rotting quartz.
I ran over the area at 20khz over the ground surrounding this possible lead and found nothing, but then I found a moderate signal right at the base of the vein itself. So I switched the eureka to 6.4khz with mild discrimination turned on and it started barking at me every time I passed the coil over this spot.
So we dug about a 8 inches to clear away overburden before we started pulling out solid chunks of fragmented broken quartz which we now need to dolly up and test. We pulled out other materials including red clay which we later panned but still no colour in the pan yet but that is still no confirmation of no gold as any flake or finer gold may have already gone deeper.
The signal is still there and is barking louder now than ever so it beckons further investigation. So we have plans to go back with a crowbar and go a bit deeper over the next few days to see what we can find. One thing I know is certain, this isn't just a button or a piece of old junk. So wish us luck on this one.
