Goldchaser1
dave
Would enjoy hearing of ya trips and times on the gold,alot cant get out bush atm so,i was going to put this in AFs gold thread but thought id start another,this gold stuff might catch on,ya never know 
,ill kick it off........
Around 9 yrs ago wed just moved back up to nsw from cent vic,not knowing what i was gonna do with myself for a while i decided to hit the gold for a bit.
Id researched an area i thought had potential just over the SA border,i wasnt the first there but i looked outside the square a little and thought mmmm this looks promising.
Plans were to fly solo as i do most of the time as the wife had to man the home front,a bloke i knew had just bought a gpx4000,wed takin him out a cuppla times out nerriga way where he lived but he hadnt found his first piece yet.He said he was keen to come along but where i was heading his lack of experience had me a bit worried,a few days before i left i thought oh bugger it two of us and some company might be a good thing.
So we loaded my old cruza up to the brim and took off,it took us about 3 days to get out there and with enough supplies for a month the old girl was dragging its arse and a full tank was gone at about the 450-500klm mark.
So we arrived at the area id been eyeing and setup for a week at least before calling it a duffer then moving on.
The next morning we hit the hills,we walked about 1.5-2klms from camp to an area that looked ok,real easy country to prospect as the main indicator is quartz,it was thick on the ground but nearby a small ridge of ironstone had been pushed up eons ago,there was a bit of slate and shist about to.There was a bit going on in the area.
After about 2 hours i was on the edge of a small washout half way up a ridge and got a very faint murmour,the ground was pretty quiet around here but i still wasnt confident it was a signal,i started digging and at 8-10 out popped a small ragged bit about a gram i think,so i called grant over and said ok its here hopefully theres more,we got going and grant found his first bit of gold including a half or 20 grm bit,we had about 3ozs from this small area by mid morning but then the spot tapered off.
I said to grant ok now just start wandering the low ridges and washouts out from this spot and we might find another run. Ya never know!
About half an hour later i noticed grant down on his knees maybe with a signal i thought,this was on the edge of a larger washout where the small one joined where wed just got the 3ozs,about 200 mtrs away.
I got down there and said ya got something,he said yeah but i cant find it the detectors going off its head,we got the signal on the coil and a rough small bit was the outcome.
I said turn ya detector off and ill see whats going on here with all the noise he was talking of,i was still swinging a 3500 with a mono on it,so i fired up and swung the coil around where the nugget was and there was multiple signals,then i did a rough 180 then a 360 in the spot and the 35 told me whatever metal was on the ground around us it was thick! It was signal upon signal. There was no where to balance the detector unless ya walked 10 foot off this area.
So i said to grant ok well just start sorting it out,he turned his machine on and went to walk off to a manageable distance between us and his machine overloaded on something 3ft away,he kicked the quartz about and the signal shifted,he found it and it was a 5oz lump of quartz riddled with gold.
After that it was on,we picked up maybe 15ozs that day and thought wow what a day.
The second day was better though and we plucked out probably 30-40ozs and we were buggered,wed chased it into the deeper dirt along the washout and there was 1-3oz bits down 2ft nearly on top of each other,youd dig say a 2oz bit at 2 foot then swing back over the hole and there would be another low groan in the wall somewhere at the same depth,the digging was easy its just that there was alot of it,my shitty back was feeling it so we took the next day off.
Refreshed we were back the following day and pulled out another 15ozs odd until things slowed and the spot was nearly done,most of the nuggets and specis were in about a 20 ft square area,it did radius out a bit but it was mainly highly concentrated in a small area.
And it was all ugly gold,a broken down reef,all specis or very ragged nuggets.
We finished with about 73ozs and packed up and headed home.
A month or so later we were keen to hit the area again in the hope for any other patches so the old cruza was loaded up and we were off again.
There had been a fair bit of rain in the area so we were a little hesitant about getting back in there,there was alot of lower ground we had to cross and our worries were correct,there was no way wed get across the flats,all the lower country was soup in most areas,there was a ridge line we could access up to the area so we tried that,closest we could get was just under 11klms away so we set up camp on this ridge.
We were keen to get back to the area so it was hike in,we crawled out of the swags at about 1st light,rebooted the fire,boiled the billy,cuppla coffees,toast a few smokes and took off each morning by 6.30,gps told us it was about 10.8 klms if i remember correctly,wed arrive there most mornings by 9 odd,detect all day then by 3 return leaving us enough time and light to hike back to camp,they were big days,we did a week but couldnt hit another patch,we did pull a bit more gold mainly stragglers from the patches and i retuned the next few months with an ag bike to run around on,the spot gave up a bit over 80ozs all up and ill never forget the look on grants face when we hit that spot.
About 12 months later WA was beckoning so i made the move and havent looked back,i passed that spot into some friends that knew the area a bit later after the gpzs came out and they found a 5 oz run and some other bits a bit further north.........
,ill kick it off........Around 9 yrs ago wed just moved back up to nsw from cent vic,not knowing what i was gonna do with myself for a while i decided to hit the gold for a bit.
Id researched an area i thought had potential just over the SA border,i wasnt the first there but i looked outside the square a little and thought mmmm this looks promising.
Plans were to fly solo as i do most of the time as the wife had to man the home front,a bloke i knew had just bought a gpx4000,wed takin him out a cuppla times out nerriga way where he lived but he hadnt found his first piece yet.He said he was keen to come along but where i was heading his lack of experience had me a bit worried,a few days before i left i thought oh bugger it two of us and some company might be a good thing.
So we loaded my old cruza up to the brim and took off,it took us about 3 days to get out there and with enough supplies for a month the old girl was dragging its arse and a full tank was gone at about the 450-500klm mark.
So we arrived at the area id been eyeing and setup for a week at least before calling it a duffer then moving on.
The next morning we hit the hills,we walked about 1.5-2klms from camp to an area that looked ok,real easy country to prospect as the main indicator is quartz,it was thick on the ground but nearby a small ridge of ironstone had been pushed up eons ago,there was a bit of slate and shist about to.There was a bit going on in the area.
After about 2 hours i was on the edge of a small washout half way up a ridge and got a very faint murmour,the ground was pretty quiet around here but i still wasnt confident it was a signal,i started digging and at 8-10 out popped a small ragged bit about a gram i think,so i called grant over and said ok its here hopefully theres more,we got going and grant found his first bit of gold including a half or 20 grm bit,we had about 3ozs from this small area by mid morning but then the spot tapered off.
I said to grant ok now just start wandering the low ridges and washouts out from this spot and we might find another run. Ya never know!
About half an hour later i noticed grant down on his knees maybe with a signal i thought,this was on the edge of a larger washout where the small one joined where wed just got the 3ozs,about 200 mtrs away.
I got down there and said ya got something,he said yeah but i cant find it the detectors going off its head,we got the signal on the coil and a rough small bit was the outcome.
I said turn ya detector off and ill see whats going on here with all the noise he was talking of,i was still swinging a 3500 with a mono on it,so i fired up and swung the coil around where the nugget was and there was multiple signals,then i did a rough 180 then a 360 in the spot and the 35 told me whatever metal was on the ground around us it was thick! It was signal upon signal. There was no where to balance the detector unless ya walked 10 foot off this area.
So i said to grant ok well just start sorting it out,he turned his machine on and went to walk off to a manageable distance between us and his machine overloaded on something 3ft away,he kicked the quartz about and the signal shifted,he found it and it was a 5oz lump of quartz riddled with gold.
After that it was on,we picked up maybe 15ozs that day and thought wow what a day.
The second day was better though and we plucked out probably 30-40ozs and we were buggered,wed chased it into the deeper dirt along the washout and there was 1-3oz bits down 2ft nearly on top of each other,youd dig say a 2oz bit at 2 foot then swing back over the hole and there would be another low groan in the wall somewhere at the same depth,the digging was easy its just that there was alot of it,my shitty back was feeling it so we took the next day off.
Refreshed we were back the following day and pulled out another 15ozs odd until things slowed and the spot was nearly done,most of the nuggets and specis were in about a 20 ft square area,it did radius out a bit but it was mainly highly concentrated in a small area.
And it was all ugly gold,a broken down reef,all specis or very ragged nuggets.
We finished with about 73ozs and packed up and headed home.
A month or so later we were keen to hit the area again in the hope for any other patches so the old cruza was loaded up and we were off again.
There had been a fair bit of rain in the area so we were a little hesitant about getting back in there,there was alot of lower ground we had to cross and our worries were correct,there was no way wed get across the flats,all the lower country was soup in most areas,there was a ridge line we could access up to the area so we tried that,closest we could get was just under 11klms away so we set up camp on this ridge.
We were keen to get back to the area so it was hike in,we crawled out of the swags at about 1st light,rebooted the fire,boiled the billy,cuppla coffees,toast a few smokes and took off each morning by 6.30,gps told us it was about 10.8 klms if i remember correctly,wed arrive there most mornings by 9 odd,detect all day then by 3 return leaving us enough time and light to hike back to camp,they were big days,we did a week but couldnt hit another patch,we did pull a bit more gold mainly stragglers from the patches and i retuned the next few months with an ag bike to run around on,the spot gave up a bit over 80ozs all up and ill never forget the look on grants face when we hit that spot.
About 12 months later WA was beckoning so i made the move and havent looked back,i passed that spot into some friends that knew the area a bit later after the gpzs came out and they found a 5 oz run and some other bits a bit further north.........
