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Smythesdale is a very interesting gold area I believe. Mackka
Any evidence of hydraulic sluicing in the area as could possibly be slurry flows from old washing operations?
Not sure, old reef line and a lead runs through this site according to geovic, the gravel all being the same size says your probably right..
I've only concentrated my detecting in the triangle to Amherst, talbot, nerrina, Beaufort and a really small area of crewick and in specific small areas coz I like to keep hitting the same ground in different ways to learn it's individuality.
I've allways done pan sampling where I've got bits, why is there hardly ever even a small colour in the surrounding ground mate?
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I know what you mean about no fines with the nuggets. On the mining claims I've had over the years, I often sieved about a 100kgs of the wash and panned it off. There was never any tiny nuggets, or any fines at all. It was a case of good nuggets and nothing else. The reason I did the panning was to see if there was any coarse, reefy type gold fragments there. Nuggets are good, but if you can trace a reef up they're shedding from, you're really in the money.wiley.
Could make a few vanilla slices out of that.
The fineness of the clay particles must be incredibly small and no wonder not even small gold to be found. Keep diggin.
Yeah it's ultra fine grained like talc powder, smooth and silky when I rub it between my fingers.
We are digging out a giant pit full of it, most likely a settling pond from past mining.
I'm not digging this pit out but snuck down there before knockoff to see what pumping the water out has revealed.
Edge of conglomerate cap, not sure if the gravels below have been put there or are the shed/decomposition from the bottom of the cap..
Edge of conglomerate cap, not sure if the gravels below have been put there or are the shed/decomposition from the bottom of the cap..
That looks good enough to eat!
Snap, Crackle and Pop, just add the gold.
That looks natural to me, the brown iron being dues to weathering of gravel over millions of years.
Also natural. Is there gold in it?
How bazaar, I was just thinking about you ey.
Dunno, will buy a dolly pot tomorrow if the shops open.
When I look at this on geovic, this pit is a big fat area of a lead.
'If' there is some colour left, where is best to sample?
Should I wait until I dig a few meters back off the cap and sample what's under it to make sure it's virgin?
Will the colour be high in the gravels under the cap, or at the bottom of the gravels sitting on the decomposed slates?
Should we be seeing some evidence of rounding of particles in the conglomerate to indicate they were formed by water action over a long enough period to also allow for gold concentration.
No, not necessary. Water-gravity separation only requires a density difference (and gold is 6 times as dense as quartz). Concentration can occur rapidly in a short distance. Smythesdale was near the top of the palaeo-dividing range so quartz will not necessarily have rounded much. Most gold gets concentrated within a few km of its source area. When you see gold concentrated in gravels that have well-rounded pebbles, it is often because the gold is locally aided to rivers in which the pebbles have come a long distance. If you have north-south gold reefs and a north-south river flowing over them, gold can be replenished to the river in a number of places.
In a river system gold is often concentrated near the bedrock gold deposits by lighter material being washed further downstream. Only the finer gold will be transported far downstream, where as the river slows, gold in suspension drops out.
So there are two ways in which gold concentrates in rivers - by removal of light material from it near the head, and by slowing of the water downstream. And the process can repeat at various distances along the river as the river encounters new bedrock gold sources.
