TenOunce Tone
tony
Hi all,
Well I packed up my kit and went bush looking at a few spots and revisiting a place that had some unfinished business...
The pic below is the place I went to about 6 weeks ago with the wife and son, we stayed for an hour then went to Cooktown.. I was out voted!
The rocks in the picture were just poking out of the water, how things change in a few weeks up north!
This is the area I started working on and found some nice colors to get the day off to a good start.
After I had cleared the crevices in the bottom of the photo, the long one running along the bottom right and the area in front of the rocky outcrop middle left, the rock strata sticking up all come apart and started to go down into clay.
I moved a bit further down stream and found this little beauty..
The rock was pretty clean but... There were some nice boil holes and some gravels tucked in behind the sloping face of the rock wall, the stream flows from the right.. After dodging a couple of scorpions hiding among the larger gravel... The entire bar is about 20 - 25 m from bank to bank and about 10 - 15 m across, lots of clean areas where the flow has washed the gravels away.
I opened up a couple of holes and ran it through the Turbo pan, the two pics are from each of the holes I cleaned out...
The Turbo pan, Well let me tell you, as you can see from pic of the rock bar there was not much water, there was a puddle about 2 x 2m and about ankle deep, it was on the front edge of the sloping face... it is just out of frame.
I used the turbo pan in this amount of water and got the results in the pics, seriously, this thing works! If you have one and have not used it, then take the time to learn how to use it, I was making large vigorous swirls under water, make four or five large swirls then stop, shake side to side to center and go again, keep the pan as level as you can, I was putting everything in there, 3-4 inch stones etc. At the big rock bar, I was using the Bunnings screen.. 1/4 " or there abouts, you will feel the larger overburden hitting your hands, it literally takes 2 minutes of work to get the pan down to a point where you are using the regular riffles and cleaning out. Early on in the day, I used the super sluice to pan out the first crevices and had the Turbo as a catch pan... just to see what would be saved, well after carefully using the super sluice, I panned out the turbo and there were four or five pieces in the pan..
The rock bar gave me an opportunity to use my home made crevice sucker, worked a treat getting the goodies out from the bottom of the holes, at least as far it would reach...
Have to do the final clean up, I estimate about .2g of flour gold.. no pickers today (( I will put up a pic when the cleaning is done, lots of black sands as you can see..
Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics
cheers, Tone
Well I packed up my kit and went bush looking at a few spots and revisiting a place that had some unfinished business...
The pic below is the place I went to about 6 weeks ago with the wife and son, we stayed for an hour then went to Cooktown.. I was out voted!
The rocks in the picture were just poking out of the water, how things change in a few weeks up north!
This is the area I started working on and found some nice colors to get the day off to a good start.
After I had cleared the crevices in the bottom of the photo, the long one running along the bottom right and the area in front of the rocky outcrop middle left, the rock strata sticking up all come apart and started to go down into clay.
I moved a bit further down stream and found this little beauty..
The rock was pretty clean but... There were some nice boil holes and some gravels tucked in behind the sloping face of the rock wall, the stream flows from the right.. After dodging a couple of scorpions hiding among the larger gravel... The entire bar is about 20 - 25 m from bank to bank and about 10 - 15 m across, lots of clean areas where the flow has washed the gravels away.
I opened up a couple of holes and ran it through the Turbo pan, the two pics are from each of the holes I cleaned out...
The Turbo pan, Well let me tell you, as you can see from pic of the rock bar there was not much water, there was a puddle about 2 x 2m and about ankle deep, it was on the front edge of the sloping face... it is just out of frame.
I used the turbo pan in this amount of water and got the results in the pics, seriously, this thing works! If you have one and have not used it, then take the time to learn how to use it, I was making large vigorous swirls under water, make four or five large swirls then stop, shake side to side to center and go again, keep the pan as level as you can, I was putting everything in there, 3-4 inch stones etc. At the big rock bar, I was using the Bunnings screen.. 1/4 " or there abouts, you will feel the larger overburden hitting your hands, it literally takes 2 minutes of work to get the pan down to a point where you are using the regular riffles and cleaning out. Early on in the day, I used the super sluice to pan out the first crevices and had the Turbo as a catch pan... just to see what would be saved, well after carefully using the super sluice, I panned out the turbo and there were four or five pieces in the pan..
The rock bar gave me an opportunity to use my home made crevice sucker, worked a treat getting the goodies out from the bottom of the holes, at least as far it would reach...
Have to do the final clean up, I estimate about .2g of flour gold.. no pickers today (( I will put up a pic when the cleaning is done, lots of black sands as you can see..
Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics
cheers, Tone
