I found a speck....Point me to find the rest :)

Hi guys,
Loving being a member here so far
I've found a totally unconventional spot & thought bugger it I'll take a pan & see if worth taking the sluice.
I panned about 1/4 of a bucket if that & found a tiny pin prick speck. Keep in mind this was from the bottom of the bank in slushy gravelly edges.
Most of the left hand bank is Basalt from under the river bed to the top of the bank about 12ft. The other side is a not so steep mud bank. Most of this river is all sandy muddy crap with alittle gravel along the edge of the water flow, as for deeper than 6 inches I don't know but from my bit of material there was tons of black sand left in the pan, like enough to cover the bottom nicely.
I was wondering if anyone could give me an idea the best spots to poke about.
This is about a 1km stretch. Plenty of water still flowing it's just hard to get down the banks in many places as tall grass and steep steep banks. Snakes all over the show too. Also as u see......LAVA!!!! lol
Thanks for any help in advance

Jerryx4, I'm just curious as to whether you had a look up on that ridge to the left of where you found that speck, and was there any indication of a horizon with water worn coloured quartz just where the basalt runs out?
It would also be interesting to check the inside of the dog's leg in the creek,as that's a deposition zone from the erosion going on upstream, I'd also have a look on the outside of the dogs leg as that's an erosion zone for the deposition at the confluence of the little tributary just up from the speck found...it's either that or a delta where the flow from the tributary was held up by the volume of water in the main creek, or there's parent rock underneath.
My second thought is that it's most probably a build of of soil rather than rock as the trees there look like they're too big to be growing over bedrock.
A third thought is that it could be part of the older river bed...either way, an interesting spot.
The best of luck with it, Jon.
P.S. A pictures worth a thousand words...I love photo's.

Thanks Jon,
The left bank where i found this speck is literally 12ft high almost vertical basalt in huge single pieces e.g. barely any crevices.
I'm thinking maybe a few hundred years ago the river was straight with no dogleg and came over the top (still does when in flood) but I have no idea how to get deep down the basalt base as its very wet and last weekend i had to wash all the crap over my classifier to get the muddy sludge off.
I did find heaps of bits of quartz & as i said heaps of black sand but no large quartz in the banks anywhere.
I like the idea around the tributary area as the river narrows alittle there so may be able to cross. Ill take an axe or something to hack down the 8ft high grass and any snakes that bare their fangs and snap at me while lava flows around.
I like the idea on the inside top corner but the top bank lowers about 4 ft to a plateau of about 20ft across before it drops the final 6ft to the river bed. I'm not sure to dig on this plateau or not as the only time it would be exposed is extreme high flooding and all the trees are there too.
Next time I'll take pics of the basalt as I can't find a generic pic.

Hi Jerry
The first thing I would do is to test pan at several spots in the gully coming in from the right of picture, you need to establish if the gold is coming down the main gully or the side gully or both, then happy days.

rc62burke wrote:Hi Jerry
The first thing I would do is to test pan at several spots in the gully coming in from the right of picture, you need to establish if the gold is coming down the main gully or the side gully or both, then happy days.

Sounds easy... so easy lol.
Have to dig quite deep to get to gravel, take chucks of grass off the top, 33deg heat no shade lol just to test pan! this weekend now i have 2 decent small classifiers I might go early early to beat the locals & snakes & take the sluice, test pan each spot & dig enough to process a bit too. If I find some with the pan i'll focus there.
More dirt processed = more chances
Although work smarter not harder I like too!
So all in all i'll focus around the inlet & the inside dog leg corner top & bottom.

Well that weekend I went back at 7am before it got hot.
I went to same spot I had found the speck & dug a 2ft long tranch and down about 18inches.
Also went to the inside of the dogleg down but the water & 2 spots higher up the bank.
I found there was a way across the river but the other bank where the inlet is was way too overgrown to get into without a machete or similar.
I sluiced about 3/4 bucket of tiny classified material, panned the tailings and took the concentrate home.
All in all i found

NOTHING!

lol failure! last weekend I went to my backup guaranteed spot and found bugger all compared to last time. Might have to find new spots

Took a few pics at this original spot to show the banks & lay of the land etc. will post them below soon

Well Jerry at least you are having a ral good go !!!! You are doing nothing wrong as I an see ! But what did research tell ou ? Are you in a known gold area? Did the old timers dig there ? Is the ground known to be arifirious ? Can you se any old costaene's dug by old prospectors ? I'm all ears ! But much respect for listening and reading up on the basics !! Now it practice ,practice, practice ! Back in the day I used to take a note book to write down all my findings , place ,type of ground , layers found ect . Found it invaluable so many times.

My research was crazy, read a Vic gold Bible (whilst on the bog lol) & it said in early 1857 nuggets were found in a 30km radius of this area but in those days all prospecting in these areas was barred so only the odd reports of nuggets were found.
The ground has been ripped & shredded over the past 100 years but no prospecting has ever been done so it was a total longshot. True I found that one speck so it means there is gold here even if in pathetic quantities.

The pics were taken at the 'speck' marked spot on the map. I didn't take any at the dog leg as I sampled high mid and low at that point.

The circle is about the level I found the speck at but in a sand bar above the waterline.
The Oval is about the area I found the speck just alittle more toward the camera.
As u can see the rock banks are quite strange around here.

Looking south


Looking north

That last pic looks very man made??
and that tree across the river looks yummy or not!

lolz!
Yea this part possibly is a man made bank as this floods hugely in winter.
There is alot of it further along that is natural for sure unless an excavator can lift 30ft long bt 20ft high solid rocks and penetrate them neatly into the back and surrounds lol.

Why: why is the bank like this? Was it to protect adjacent land from flood waters, Or was it diverting the stream!!
Pretty intense what ever the reason.
Any idea what the ground was like on the other side of that bank in the last pic??

hmmm the rocks on the side look like there been put there elce think that ??? could be just the cracks in it ohh dum me diden't look above

That bank is not natural ! More research my friend !

Tend to agree with ark.But that's a lot of work. you need to know why? I would check out the small stream from junction up to make sure that it's not feeding in from there. Also check up top and also different spots ai same level of find.wouldn't hurt to check the botton of some of the crevices..I assume you are down stream of area where main gold finds were. if you eliminate all of the above keep working upstream in likely spots.

someday wrote:That last pic looks very man made??

Yes i looked then looked again at the photos there is something quite not right with that creek. Jerry the info you have been given is spot on mate. But that creek??????????? I just don't know. cheers mate

Hi All
I am going to go out on a limb here & saythat there is a good chance that creek bank is 100% natural & I would say that it is "Bassalt" "Lava" flow, if you have a close look at the shape of the rocks they actually fit together like a puzzle I have seen this ort of thing in my hunting days on the "Great Bassalt Wall" here in NQ, I could be wrong but I would think there would be large area's of this rock away from the creek?

Hi All
Just re checked the first post, yes it is Bassalt /Lava.

Yes I had notices the fit of the stone but the angle is odd ! I could be wrong ! And often am ! Lol! In fact the whole bank looks wrong

One speck creek ay
The spec could even be from someone who just went down to the water to pan off some dirt they found elsewhere ???
I had a mate who went with me to a spot, he grabbed a pan full of semi fine, fairly clean river gravel from a nice cumfy spot on the creek edge
Mate! Mate I said, you ain't gonnu find much gold in that gravel! He was quite set back by my comment, then said why?
Cause it's me tailings pile, that's where I've been panning me samples

Just sayen!!

someday wrote:Mate! Mate I said, you ain't gonnu find much gold in that gravel! He was quite set back by my comment, then said why?
Cause it's me tailings pile, that's where I've been panning me samples

Someday, I sluiced 2 grams out of a pile just like that, back in October 2008 on Reedy Creek where a German fella was panning off his sluice concentrates So you just never know your luck

snowygold wrote:

Someday, I sluiced 2 grams out of a pile just like that, back in October 2008 on Reedy Creek where a German fella was panning off his sluice concentrates So you just never know your luck

Mate I know what you mean
I found the same happenings at Eldy myself just before christmas someone had put tons of wash through a gold escaping HB

What I was getting at, was,
if the gravel wash your looking at is small, looks clean and very localized, then there's a good chance it ain't natural

Me thinks we maybe goin getten off topic

Had a look at the history of the area of which none was conclusive about the rock placement/natural.
Large basalt walls are very common alittle further upstream. I'm talking 30-50ft high kinda thing.

I tried this area as the Gold bible I have states gold has been found EVERYWHERE even on flinders/Spencer st in the CBD so I think anywhere is worth a quick try. Maybe at some stage I'll head further upstream where there are more cliffs and closer to known gold areas?

I like your story Someday but no one has panned anything here I wouldn't think.
There is a quarry pretty close so I should pop in ask if they come across gold sumtimes.... I'm SURE they'd tell me lol!!