How much water flow to refill gold spots?

[Goldface]

Hi guys,

I was at a spot a few weeks back to try some more creviving where I have previously found good amounts of fine gold.
It was summer when I was there last and obviously the water was low.

When I was there a few weeks back the water was over where I was was previously working. Not in flood just the usual winter snow melt and winter rains.
It wasn't high over it. Maybe a foot or so deep.

I don't think the region has flooded since summer.

What are the chances of it re depositing fine gold back into the crevices with just extra flow over it?

When the water drops I am going to try it anyway, just curious of what I could expect and if winter high waters do enough to re depositing gold?

Cheers

 

[Skip]

Well I was out at Native Dog Creek a few weeks ago and went over some old holes.. not a single speck.
But someone might have beat me to it also!

I reckon you need a good flood to stir the gold from the bottom. Gold is 19 times heavier than water so you need a good push to get it moving.

 

[AussieChris]

My guess would be unless there has been a good push not much chance of redepositing, unless the crevice funnels gravels into it, rather than being more side on like a riffle.
Good chance however of cleaning out the crevice a bit and making gold that was pushed up to a side or hard to clean out in the dry easier to get to. I have gone back and worked crevices a week or two later to find sometimes decent bits I missed, but mostly put it down to luck and maybe me being lazy at the end of the day.
I think about Mitchells Creek, Sunny Corner. I know some crevices there that have seen more traffic than Central Station, I have got good gold out of them over the last 8 years, but there has not been a good gully raker through there in a while and most of them are as clean as your good china. :goldnugget: :goldpan:

If you got good gold out of the crevice in the summer, I'm sure you will get good gold out of its buddy 10m upstream etc

 

[user 4386]

You do get more gold brought down, but it will probably be fine gold - I reckon new crevices will beat already sampled ones anyday.

Of course most alluvial gold during the gold-rushes did not come out of modern streams....

 

[Gimp]

Give those crevices another millenia to refill as they probably had before you dug them. Think about how many floods over tens, hundreds or thousands of years it took to deposit the gold found.

 

[DrDuck]

Yep, Gimp has it right.

Apparently the earliest prospectors could use a tablespoon to to pick up the gold in exposed bedrock riffles.

Reports of ounces to the pan were common, and a couple of blokes with a cradle could recover multiple ounces a day. I saw an early report on Trove of two blokes and a boy at Tuena recovering 20 ounces a day with a cradle and pans.

You have to be a lateral thinker and avoid those crevices where every man and their dog has been poking about over the last 50 years or more.

 

[AussieChris]

Flood gold does shift around a fair bit though Gimp, just need to give it time and cross your fingers for a big one. I work the Turon mostly and in the last 20 years, it has had a handful of what would be called "1 in a 100" floods and then several more major flood situations. The big ones certainly shift things around, I would love to see Mitchells Creek get a big one through it, plenty of good crevices there get gold redeposited, its just been so long since a biggun went through there. I'll be standing in line after the next flood. :goldpan:

Edit

Of course Dr Duck it will never be like what the old timers experienced, I read on Trove reports of 5oz hauls in a pan/shovel. I get excited to bring home over a gram
Anything more is like Christmas. No doubt we have to work hard for a sample of the stuff these days but if it was easy you would have to fight the 30,000 others for a spot on the river like in 1853. Certainly be eye-opening to see what it was like back then even for a day, knowing my luck I'd come back with cholera, smallpox and syphilis from my day out.

 

[DrDuck]

A/C
I reckon the best bet after a big flood is where lots of material has been shifted. There will be new deposits of fresh gravel, and areas where surprising amounts of gravel have been shifted, exposing bedrock that has been buried for a long time, or at least has only a shallow covering. I've seen this happen at Tuena.

Back in the early 70's, when I was about 15 i went to Oallen, and walked downstream from the crossing, and much of the area was exposed bedrock. Now, of course, it consists of an extensive sand and gravel bar.

I met an old bloke with an iron pan who told me that he did OK.

Those with a long memory will know of him, apparently he walked into Marulan or Goulburn every once in a while to cash in some gold and pick up supplies.

 

[jethro]

On Reedy crk at Eldorado Vic, the locals reckon that the gold will replenish the old flogged spots once the water flow reaches the bottom of the swing bridge over the creek. I dont know if the bridge is even still there, but apparently the water was travelling at about 8 metres per second.

 

[user 4386]

On Reedy crk at Eldorado Vic, the locals reckon that the gold will replenish the old flogged spots once the water flow reaches the bottom of the swing bridge over the creek. I dont know if the bridge is even still there, but apparently the water was travelling at about 8 metres per second.

Eldorado was actually a deep-lead mining field, in which a significant part of the income came from tin (although gold dominated). Because of the dredge, people often think it was shallow alluvial gold, but the gold was actually deep and fine-grained, and had probably travelled all the way from Beechworth and upstream of Beechworth to its south. The Eldorado dredge was operating on wash at seventy feet below surface - produced around 70,000 oz gold and 1450 tons tin concentrate..

 

[user 4386]

You could try this (as one barbarian to another)

Myth of the Golden Fleece
"the myth of the fleece refers to a method of washing gold from streams, which was well attested (but only from c. 5th century BC) in the region of Georgia to the east of the Black Sea. Sheep fleeces, sometimes stretched over a wood frame, would be submerged in the stream, and gold flecks borne down from upstream placer deposits would collect in them. The fleeces would be hung in trees to dry before the gold was shaken or combed out. Alternatively, the fleeces would be used on washing tables in alluvial mining of gold or on washing tables at deep gold mines.....

Strabo describes the way in which gold could be washed:
"It is said that in their country gold is carried down by the mountain torrents, and that the barbarians obtain it by means of perforated troughs and fleecy skins, and that this is the origin of the myth of the golden fleece...."