ID a ore sample please?

Hi Forum, been a reader for a while. Don't have a lot of knowledge to contribute as I am still very much a beginner having only done this a year or so.

I found this piece of quartz in a mullock heap and the bits that had cleaved off were in my pan. Where there was a gold trail this stuff was right there with it. I thought it might be galena at first but in doing a little research found that it cleaves off leaving defined cubic faces. Calaverite maybe?

Sourced from the Bucca goldfields Coffs Harbour



Thanks if anyone can help me - plenty of this stuff there so kinda hoping it is chock full of gold

*edit* The colour of the pic is very accurate, the material is a dull grey. Not gold like Iron Pyrites. The quartz is very rusty red.

Maybe Nickel?

Bit of a guess really, but I'm wondering whether it could be sphalerite, which is sort of similar looking to galena. Sphalerite is a zinc ore (zinc sulphide and often containing iron). It can be associated with quartz and gold. Often crystalline but not always. (Google "sphalerite quartz gold" for pickies.)
Max.

Thanks, I appreciate it can be difficult to identify 'shiny metallic stuff' via a picture

Is this rusty iron stained quartz the sort of rock I should be looking for to find gold? Or can I expect it to be appearing in some other sort of rock? Keeping in mind I am in the Bucca goldfields, which don't produce nuggets (of the scale of say the triangle), the biggest I have heard of is a 11oz one found in the 1890's (on a mullock heap LOL). The geology is mixed with quartz strikes being common through both the granite country east of Nana Glen and the Slate/Sandstone west of that....

I haven't been able to find any information on ironstone, although it is reasonably common to get hotrocks in the creeks and hillsides.

In searching for the sphalerite I looked at some other sulphides. I know that for this actual mine an assay sample came back as 3oz/tonne Silver. In the pics of Silver Sulphide I found it looked pretty similar. I know that if you spit on silver sulphide and wrap it in aluminium foil then the silver will be reduced and Hydrogen Sulphide gas (easily recognisable). I'll give one of the chips a test.