Ophir Goldfield Reserve - PICS

Entering the Ophir Reserve

There's a few Victorian prospectors here on this site plus a few from overseas. Just sharing some pictures taken yesterday which some might like. I've also reduced them to a smaller size than I usually post as per requests by Admin though I have no idea how wide they are since the process is automated elsewhere.

I've been collecting visual material on many of the local goldfields near Sydney for a while now and the only place I was missing in terms of Photography was the Ophir Goldfield Reserve. With a sunny day at hand (at last!) my wife (Rena) and I headed out to get some well overdue shots of the area and to sample the soil and explore the ground nearby. There's actually a house for sale on the border of the Reserve if any of you enterprising chaps are interested.

Ophir is famous for being the first place that Payable gold was discovered back in 1851. It was announced by a man called Edward Hargraves, (who was something of a scoundrel if you've read about his motivations elsewhere) though it sparked off the Gold Rush which in turn made Australia what it is today. Ophir is not what I was call a Huge reserve but it's large enough to support an operational Gold Mine, even today. This same same mine produced the ore that was used to make the Olympic Gold medals for the Sydney 2000 Olympics and the surrounding districts often give up the occasional nugget to a passing fossicker.

Today, many families come down by the historic banks of the river to pan for gold and to camp. When we were ready to leave, a camper came down from his roast dinner to talk to us as we gave his kids some tips on panning. They'd been edging closer to us on the river bank as we worked ... probably to try and figure out how to use their own gold pans ...and we took pity on them before giving them a little specimen jar and some chunky granules of Ophir gold so they'd know what they should be looking for.

It got pretty hot at midday on Sunday. Felt like 38 degrees in the sun. Evening set in with rapidly dropping temperatures and we glimpsed wispy Cyrus clouds high up in the sky on our way back to town. Though we saw no snakes (and I've been trying to find some for the camera), we found plenty of lizards and some were friendly enough to pose for the lens. I'm still nursing some bloody scratches from a bearded dragon again and keep forgetting that their claws are so sharp.

Rena assisted me with some shots with equipment for a publication and then we took some time to detect with reasonable success. I'd already used a satellite map to determine where I was going to detect long before we arrived and the effort was well spent. We found about 20 grams of gold including a couple of grams that we pulled out of the sluice.. although it should be noted that I had no desire to pan dirt from the river itself due to the high volume of visitors there... so we carted some soil down from the hills that I'd dug from under layers of old gravel wash nearly a kilometer away. We had to detect outside of the Ophir reserve in order to find anything worthwhile.... as I suspect the main reserve has been flogged to death and was known more for the fine alluvial gold and fine reef gold than nuggets. However, the occasional small nugget has been won from the Ophir district by the more dogged detectorist with the right equipment settings and even some of the earliest discoveries at Ophir involved nuggets. We selected a property to the North of Ophir which is a short way past the active Gold Mine and uncovered six nuggets after getting used to the soil. The larger Monoloop coils were fairly quiet on the 5000 here but the standard DD coil seemed to offer more stability so close to powerlines on the nearby properties and with the surrounding fence wire. We attempted to find gold within the Reserve using detectors but were unsuccessful. No artifacts were found either. The soil we sampled high up on the surrounding hills and took down to the creek to sluice produced a couple of grams of attractive gold.

I have no doubt that most of the NSW members of this forum would have visited the Ophir region or at least passed by it on their way to Wellington or Stuart Town. It's a location that is rich in history and a good number of mine shafts (drives) can actually be accessed by tourists and visitors. The entry of which is actually encouraged by local council (so I'm guessing that toxic fumes are not a problem here). We encountered no leeches in the creek though they certainly are known to exist here. The road was pitted with some larger potholes and tarred sections of the road appeared to have been recently been patched up. Rena was driving on the way back and took a corner too sharp and perhaps a little too fast - mounting a very large rock with the side of our car ...which did not go down well with me at the time.

When we left, we were driving towards the sun and observed a somewhat rare phenomenon called a "Sundog". A Sundog (see pic below) is the result of ice crystals refracting sunlight to form a partial halo at extremely high altitude and it is almost always associated with Cyrrus Ice clouds.

I may not get the chance to return to Ophir until the next club outing there and I'm fairly busy digging elsewhere at the moment. Our local Prospecting club was scheduled to visit Ophir just this month but I passed on the trip due to ongoing bad weather at the time. The other members reported to me that little gold was found on that trip to Ophir which is why I sampled my soil elsewhere on the reserve rather than hope to dig it from the creek banks. The tunnels in the hills next to the camping ground appear to zig-zag East to West which suggests the early fossickers knew that the ore often appears to run North to South and it was suggested by a camper that I spoke with that they must have been hoping to intersect a lode by tunneling in this manner.

Ophir is roughly 35 minutes drive North of Orange and is situated on Lower Lewis Ponds road.
It is easily accessible in a non-4-wheel-drive sedan. Observe posted signage and regulations. The Camping Area can be prone to flash flooding during heavy torrential rains. Panning is permitted along the river at all locations.

Cheers,


Marco



Darcy's Curio shop... on the way into Orange, NSW


The Road between Bathurst and Orange


Rena using her GPX-5000


A picture of a Bearded Dragon Lizard. He was happy to let me photograph him.
But not so happy when I picked him up. I forgot how sharp their claws are.


Rena trying to pinpoint a nugget with a Coiltek Probe


13 grams of Ophir Gold.


17.43 grams of Ophir Gold.


Rena using a River Sluice.


More Ophir Gold... although we carted this soil down from about a kilometer awat


View from inside one of the Gold Mine drives.


Surface tension on the creek.


Chunky little nuggets from the ancient gravel beds higher up.


Summer Creek & Lewis Ponds join up and merge at Ophir District.


A rare "Sundog"... which is a rainbow ring (usually only visible to the left and right)
around the sun. Was prettier that this picture shows.


The Cirrus Ice Clouds responsible for the Sundog above.

Awesome gold and pics

Marco

Thanks for a well written ( unusual in this day and age) post and the very nice photos.
Kind regards

Mark

marco good story and pics
i have been in a curio shop in the main street of Inglewood vic that looks exactly like the one in your photo of Darcy's
dave

Great photos and colour!

Good story and pics Marco, just a couple of things I thought you may wish to check before you send your publication to the printers...

10.5kg of gold went into the medals for the 2000 games, of that I am pretty sure under 1oz only was donated from that mine which is one of three still operating in Ophir. Newcrest donated 2kg from thier Cadia mine, the rest was bought from Cadia, prospectors, other small mines in the area with raised funds.
His big "we supplied the gold for the 2000 Olympics" is just a big crock of publicity BS.

Large nuggets close to and over the oz still come from Ophir very regularly, a 3+oz beauty not two weeks back.. the trick with Ophir is to access the more out of the way places by bike or quad, as Ophir is hit hard by the weekend crews from Orange who tend to stray not far from where thier cars can get to.
Surface hill always produces small nuggets and is a brilliant spot for people new to detecting to get the hang of thier machine and have a good chance of nabbing a bit.

My biggest nugget from ophir was 2 1/2 oz found in the lower campsite at SummerHill ck opposite the crossing with an XT17000.
The fathers day nugget found by peter Culverson, though I'm not sure of the weight, the thing was big enough to be honoured with its own coin from the Perth mint.
Peter still operates his mine thier and he's worth a chat to if you want some good info for your publication. You'll see him each afternoon emptying the bins and pumping up the water in the camp site.

As for snakes, the aboriginal name for Ophir actually means, either "many snakes" or "meeting place of snakes" or something like that. It's the only place in NSW where I've actually seen a Death Adder.

Once again, good story and great pics!

Tuna, your not serious are you....Ophir (Hebrew: אוֹפִיר, Modern Ofir Tiberian ʼÔp̄îr) is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. King Solomon is supposed to have received a cargo of gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks from Ophir, every three years.

mate...Ophir is not the aboriginal name

Lol...my bad

I love going down to Ophir, beautiful place to camp. Just wish my wife would share in the fun of prospecting........ Great story and pics. well done.

Nice pics and gold!
Keep it up

Thanks for taking the time to post those piccys nero_design. Isn't this what it's all about. Beautiful..

Panther

Nero,

What can i say, just brilliant photos....It was really refreshing to look at those pics after listening to the world news today...See we really do live in a wonderful country depicted in your shots.
Us victorians really do appreciate you sharing this with us and the other forum members do too, so thanks once again....

I like all the shots but that Ophir nugget next to the pinpointer>>>That is just awwwwwwsom....

HueyDuck....

Gee i wish i could fit so much into one day.

Carting gravel from so far away to get a few grams of the good stuff, detecting too and finding all them NUGGS. Harassing that poor Reptile!!! Serves your self right ( some pics of your wounds would be nice )

Any how how much are you asking for the house.

DINGO,

DINGO wrote:....Harassing that poor Reptile!!! Serves your self right ( some pics of your wounds would be nice )

Any how how much are you asking for the house.

DINGO,

Thanks for the replies. I would have visited a second location on the weekend to the South of Sydney but I'm afraid my wife is a little sick of the long drives.

The house at Ophir that is for sale isn't mine... but the owners have a Real Estate sign posted out the front though I didn't take a picture. My wife said I should have at least photographed the phone number so I could have called them up later to see what the asking price was. I though a detecting club would do well to chip in and buy it for collective use like they do in the United States. The location is right up close to the road leading to the working mine... right near the North entrance to the Reserve.

As for the lizard, you can see his claws digging in ...



Hi Dingo,

There's some pictures of one of his brethren that I rescued from the middle of the road near Hill End getting his claws into my wrist here:
1, 2 & 3

The first samples of gravel for washing was selected carefully and I chose three areas to sample it from... all dug from below the largest and deepest layers of wash that I could manage. The first sample consisting of a gritty red mixture that reminded me of beach sand though dark red. The second was a white-grey clay that was easily crumbled... But the last was some random soil that simply looked likely to sport a bit of gold. The problem of course is that it all went into the same container together. So I'll be hard pressed to figure out which spot produced the bulk of it on a repeat run. The soil was VERY hard to break with the pick. I thought all the wet weather we've had would have softened the ground a little more - the pick seemed to bounce off it.

Cheers!

Pulled some slate apart there recently on a first trip with my young grandson.Was a few stand ups left at the bottom of a surfaced area not far from the beehives, took the scrapings down and panned up 22 pieces,many rattlers, the young bloke was over the moon.
Talking snakes, down in the quarry area theres a couple of big browns, often spotted together recently,so maybe a bit of nesting going on there, its a popular spot for people to take kids into the shafts,
great pics, good post, phill

mate do you have the exact address to get here been chasing it up with no luck just keeps showing me the town of ophir i was led to beleive that there is a place to camp for $5 a night which i am trying to find as i want to come down for a weekend and pan any info you could provide would br appreciated

.