What to look for.

[Parks]

It seemed popular in the small mining thread so thought I would show some pics for anyone new to prospecting of what I look for.
Feel free to place additional images from around Oz.

This is a strip mined sluice race

 

[Parks]

As I walked up the area the chunks of quartz become bigger with one quite large chunk. Beyond this there's no quartz.

 

[Parks]

One side of the sluiced area has little quartz while the other side has heaps. About 20 mtrs beyond the pile of quartz is a 180 ft mine shaft. You can tell they have gone deeper by the slates on top. This leaves the area in green with about 5 ft of overburden that would be excellent nugget ground.

 

[Parks]

Here's one of my latest interests. The Great Dividing range, created around 300 million years ago by tectonic plate movement and stretching around 3000 klms up the east coast. The original mountain range stood 1-2 klms above the present day height. So the question is where did all that soil (some gold bearing) go?

It has eroded both inland and towards the coast

And every now and then hits hard rock along the way. This spot shows a sand spit caused by ocean currents which has cut the river off and hard rock, which would act like a giant riffle in a sluice box. I'm not saying it is this spot, but along this stretch of coast somewhere occurred a gold rush. The gold was on the bedrock, at the beach, and around 6 ft under the beach sand. Locals pegged out the beach overnight and ripped up their carpets at home, lay them on the beach and used the tides to wash the soils. Each claim from this area (where ever it is) averaged 2 oz