Welcome to the forum Alicia.
Focus on the creek itself. Look for bends in the creek, the inner bend is your best bet for gold. The gold will occur in pockets in the creek along a pay streak. To find the pay streak if the creek is running try throwing a stick into the creek and watch where the water takes it. You will find it will move to the centre and then be carried to one of the banks. It will then move back to the centre and onto another bank. Wherever it lands on the banks take a sample pan.
Also look for rocks that sit up in the creek and take a sample from behind it where the water flows past it. There will be a small eddy current just behind the rock and that allows the gold to drop down to the bottom.
Where you have a fast flow of water look just beyond it to where the water starts to slow down. You will see small eddy currents. Again the gold will drop down to the bottom where these exist.
Like Kane said look for bedrock that is going across the width of the creek, these act like the riffles in a sluice box and trap the gold. Where you find bedrock like this look for crevices in the bedrock and clean these crevices out. The gold will drop to the bottom of the crevice so you really need to clean these out thoroughly. The best thing about these is they will fill back up again quickly hopefully trapping new flood gold as it comes down the creek for you to gather up at a later date. Always go back to a good crevice and check it every few months.
Look for quartz the rustier looking the better. Look for rocks that have quartz veins in them. Look for blue clay layers, the clay will trap the gold. Look for black sand, its heavier material than normal sand and often a magnet will pick it up. These are all good indicators you are in the right area for gold.
The fact you are getting the little magnetite crystals shows your panning technique isn't too bad already but try practicing with some lead shot or small lead sinkers in your pan as they are a good substitute for gold to practice on. If you can keep the led shot in your pan than you will be able to keep gold in your pan when you get it.
Look up a process known as Loaming on the forum search and on google. It is basically a sampling technique designed to find the pockets of gold and hopefully the reef where the gold is shedding off.
Like Kane said you are welcome to join us at the coffee catchup and go for a dig afterwards.
Also go and have a chat to George at the NQ Miners Den in Anderson Street. He's got a tonne of experience finding gold and is a wealth of information.
Anyway hope this helps and best of luck with it.
