- Joined
- Jan 13, 2018
- Messages
- 155
- Reaction score
- 356
Hello!
Ive been lurking a bit here lately, reading and learning from the regulars, even sometimes chuckling a bit. So thanks. And apologies, my intro got a bit long...
TL;DR version: I like gold, dont know what Im doing, hello.
I live in East Gippsland, Victoria. Caught the gold bug when I was a kid but only recently got serious about prospecting as a hobby, and Im having a lot of fun. I enjoy 4WDing, bushwalking, history, maps, archaeology and puzzles. Oh and gold of course. So Im not sure why it took me so long to get here, but here I am.
Ive got gold bearing creeks within 20 minutes of home as well as old alluvial diggings dating from the late 1850s. Plenty of later reef and hard rock areas a little further away. More bush than you can poke a stick at.
I started looking for gold north of Bullumwaal a few weeks back armed with nothing but a pan and a license and the confidence born of ignorance. My spot was the first gully I saw that still held a few spots of muddy water, below an old eroded area. I worked all day for 5 microscopic dots of gold, shredded fingers and a dozen tiger leeches. Looking back, Ive no idea what I thought I was doing, puddling about in the mud. But I had fun.
The next weekend (armed with the above plus a hand trowel) I went back and made my way down the gully to the creek in 41 degree heat. Worked twice as hard in loose gravel in the creek, got half as much. Basically nothing. I wondered if I was holding my pan upside down or something...
But I had fun. And met the fattest black snake I ever saw.
Next weekend I explored some of the old diggings earlier mentioned, trying to piece together what the diggers were doing, and how it might have looked back in the day. Headed down to the creek below (armed with the earlier pack, plus a modified yabby pump, some crevicing tools, a new bigger pan, sieve and stuff... you know how it is!) and found some lovely bedrock areas with big empty cleaned holes. I panned nearby for a few more microscopic specs. I was stoked to find that I was consistently catching dozens of little red and orange stones that showed up in the last of the pan. I must be doing something right. But panning an area beside somebody elses recently dredged hole* wasnt it, even if I did have fun.
[*If anybody else is playing out there, be sure to wave at any tree that might have hidden cameras in it... give the DELWP something to laugh at.]
I worked away last week and Saturday and had plenty to catch up on when I got home, but was itching to get back out. Id spent my nights reading here, on trove, poring over old maps, reading about rocks, panning around Google Earth. I knew where I wanted to go - a different creek below a bend a bit off the beaten track. So with all chores done in the morning I headed off at 1 oclock, bee-lined my target, more or less, and hit the creek by 2.
It was stunning, the creek was running clean, rippling over bedrock, pooling around big moss covered stones (everything is moss covered, including the soil on the banks. Kanuka overhead. The opposite bank is a wide bar of gravel and big rocks some 15 metres wide. Plenty of crevices, patches of old black gravel deposited in the clear water below every rock. Decomposing conglomerate stuff aplenty. I didnt know where to start.
Scooped a couple of trowels of fine gravel and muck from behind a boulder above the water line near the side of the creek. Panned it off to find a line of fine gold and one big chunk winking up at me. Okay, when the excitement died off and I had a proper look, it wasnt as big as I thought. More of a picker.... eh... not even that. But nonetheless, a proper bit of gold, big enough to put on my finger and feel. Though each time I look at it now it seems a little smaller...
I grabbed my backpack and discovered I had nothing to put it in. My specimen bottles and snuffer bottle were in the car, at the top of the hill, through the scrub...
Some time later, Id got there and back, panned several more pans from the same spot, each holding between five and ten little flakes, none as big as the first but all better than the tiny specks Id been finding.
I snuffed them all up, along with the fine stuff, only discovering while cleaning my last pan that the tube in my snuffer bottle went all the way to the bottom, and every squeeze of water was blowing black sand and gold back out. Some went back in the pan, some went back in the water.
But hey, I had fun!
Guess where Im going on the weekend?
Ive been lurking a bit here lately, reading and learning from the regulars, even sometimes chuckling a bit. So thanks. And apologies, my intro got a bit long...
TL;DR version: I like gold, dont know what Im doing, hello.
I live in East Gippsland, Victoria. Caught the gold bug when I was a kid but only recently got serious about prospecting as a hobby, and Im having a lot of fun. I enjoy 4WDing, bushwalking, history, maps, archaeology and puzzles. Oh and gold of course. So Im not sure why it took me so long to get here, but here I am.
Ive got gold bearing creeks within 20 minutes of home as well as old alluvial diggings dating from the late 1850s. Plenty of later reef and hard rock areas a little further away. More bush than you can poke a stick at.
I started looking for gold north of Bullumwaal a few weeks back armed with nothing but a pan and a license and the confidence born of ignorance. My spot was the first gully I saw that still held a few spots of muddy water, below an old eroded area. I worked all day for 5 microscopic dots of gold, shredded fingers and a dozen tiger leeches. Looking back, Ive no idea what I thought I was doing, puddling about in the mud. But I had fun.
The next weekend (armed with the above plus a hand trowel) I went back and made my way down the gully to the creek in 41 degree heat. Worked twice as hard in loose gravel in the creek, got half as much. Basically nothing. I wondered if I was holding my pan upside down or something...
But I had fun. And met the fattest black snake I ever saw.Next weekend I explored some of the old diggings earlier mentioned, trying to piece together what the diggers were doing, and how it might have looked back in the day. Headed down to the creek below (armed with the earlier pack, plus a modified yabby pump, some crevicing tools, a new bigger pan, sieve and stuff... you know how it is!) and found some lovely bedrock areas with big empty cleaned holes. I panned nearby for a few more microscopic specs. I was stoked to find that I was consistently catching dozens of little red and orange stones that showed up in the last of the pan. I must be doing something right. But panning an area beside somebody elses recently dredged hole* wasnt it, even if I did have fun.
[*If anybody else is playing out there, be sure to wave at any tree that might have hidden cameras in it... give the DELWP something to laugh at.]
I worked away last week and Saturday and had plenty to catch up on when I got home, but was itching to get back out. Id spent my nights reading here, on trove, poring over old maps, reading about rocks, panning around Google Earth. I knew where I wanted to go - a different creek below a bend a bit off the beaten track. So with all chores done in the morning I headed off at 1 oclock, bee-lined my target, more or less, and hit the creek by 2.
It was stunning, the creek was running clean, rippling over bedrock, pooling around big moss covered stones (everything is moss covered, including the soil on the banks. Kanuka overhead. The opposite bank is a wide bar of gravel and big rocks some 15 metres wide. Plenty of crevices, patches of old black gravel deposited in the clear water below every rock. Decomposing conglomerate stuff aplenty. I didnt know where to start.
Scooped a couple of trowels of fine gravel and muck from behind a boulder above the water line near the side of the creek. Panned it off to find a line of fine gold and one big chunk winking up at me. Okay, when the excitement died off and I had a proper look, it wasnt as big as I thought. More of a picker.... eh... not even that. But nonetheless, a proper bit of gold, big enough to put on my finger and feel. Though each time I look at it now it seems a little smaller...
I grabbed my backpack and discovered I had nothing to put it in. My specimen bottles and snuffer bottle were in the car, at the top of the hill, through the scrub...
Some time later, Id got there and back, panned several more pans from the same spot, each holding between five and ten little flakes, none as big as the first but all better than the tiny specks Id been finding.
I snuffed them all up, along with the fine stuff, only discovering while cleaning my last pan that the tube in my snuffer bottle went all the way to the bottom, and every squeeze of water was blowing black sand and gold back out. Some went back in the pan, some went back in the water.
But hey, I had fun!
Guess where Im going on the weekend?
