Ancient river beds

Gday guys was hoping for some answers on ancient river beds. I've got some land outside of Eden nsw and came across an upturned tree on the top of the ridgeline approximately 150m above the current river that had what looked like river rocks from pebbles to football sized rocks stuck in its roots and the hole it came from. Wasn't sure if ancient river could be at the very top of the hill like that. I unfortunately ran out of time had to get back to Vic so didnt have much time to inspect the area but I do know of a few quartz reefs close by that run in a ne/SW direction there is a fault line not far away and I found some small gold in a creek about 2km away . What would be the best way to inspect with a detector or take some samples to pan. Any advice would be great cheers

G'day keeif12

That's were you will find ancient river beds, right on top of hills (palaeochannel or paleochannel) Australia has what is called (inverted landscape) what used to be high is now the low and what used to be low is now high. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeochannel

If your finding gold in creeks not to far away then there is a good chance it may have eroded out of that old high and now dry old river bed, (paleochannel)

Detect and pan around the area and see what comes to light, old maps of the area may help that show old gold diggings would be a real bonus.

Good luck with it.
'
cheers dave

Cheers mate thanks can't wait to get back up there to have a closer look

There are many stories written regarding ancient river courses on the East coast goldfields.
Early diggers on their small patch of ground dug holes over 100 ft deep for nothing while their neighbour hit a "glory hole."
There must be millions of ounces of gold still buried, out of reach of metal detectors.

Think for most, hmm me too     ancient rivers apart from now being high'n dry, have all the gold catching
characteristics of a present stream, the problem being it can be near on impossible to read an ancient water course unless it's exposed,
or in this case being quite shallow you may well be able to probe the ground, winter time would be the go as the ground will be much softer   
Again being shallow, vegetation or lack of it, might/could be a good clue   

Thanks heaps for all the tips guys

It will be a big job, but if you want to increase your chances, If you can find the edges of the ancient river bed (ie where the river gravel stops), try to plot the course of the river, then focus on sampling the INSIDE bends of the river.

I can't think of anyway of doing that without exposing it all, which would no doubt be a lot of digging!