Teetulpa, Ulooloo, Mintaro, Clare, Mongolata S.A.

Hi Jerry
Thank you for the heads up and directions very much appreciated

Some brilliant information contained within the above posts re. Sth Australia! But now you all know why I, as a Crow Eater born & bred (as are my preceding 5 generations) will continue to spend my gold hunting money in Victoria!!

SA has become a complete nanny state, dictated to by those of very strange personal habits, and has now lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland ... from those of us who like to go detecting or panning!

It is a subject that I have written about on a number of occassions, have contacted Members of our State Govt (without a single response!) and am now completely 'over'! Look out Victoria ... I'm headed your way again this year, having at least three trips entered in my planner, including next weekend!! WooHoo!! Look out you 'Mexicans' ... this 'Crow Eater' is on her way to steal all of your gold!!!

getascripter wrote:Some brilliant information contained within the above posts re. Sth Australia!  But now you all know why I, as a Crow Eater born & bred (as are my preceding 5 generations) will continue to spend my gold hunting money in Victoria!!

SA has become a complete nanny state, dictated to by those of very strange personal habits, and has now lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland ... from those of us who like to go detecting or panning!

It is a subject that I have written about on a number of occassions, have contacted Members of our State Govt (without a single response!) and am now completely 'over'! Look out Victoria ... I'm headed your way again this year, having at least three trips entered in my planner, including next weekend!! WooHoo!! Look out you 'Mexicans' ... this 'Crow Eater' is on her way to steal all of your gold!!!  

What a load of unqualified 'baloney'. Every State has restrictions and limitations, rules and regulations, open areas and restricted areas. Don't forget to visit Ballarat when in Victoria so that you can 'renew' your oath of allegance !!

Pete you seem very knowledgable on SA goldfields. If you could PM me to talk further that would be appreciated.

Hey all, i am also new to this site and very happy to be a part of it. I am very surprised on the info on here as it is fairly good, I thought you lot would keep it under your hats so to speak. I am very interested to hear if anyone has had any luck in the Barossa as thats where i am from. I am interested in panning at this stage, but all i hear about are the goldfields there. I bet that area has been done to death by those who are sneaky enough to go in there. I am more interested in the local creeks and areas that arent well known. I also have a mate who owns property at Cromer near mt Pleasant, he has seen prospectors near there having a sniff. Anyway, i woul;d love to hear from anyone who has had a look around home and had some luck. Cheers.

You will find colour in the creeks/rivers around Sandy Creek/Cockatoo Valley....west from 'The Barracks' area..google 'Hisseys' Gully' areas..they were the original Barossa Goldfields, back to the National Park.....now the original Stamper is all on Heritage land with walking trails you cant stray from nor prospect.....the gold was generally deep so they had to wheelbarrow their loads to the stamper in the 1850/60's..many open mines in that area.....also Gomersal area will produce colour....BUT, as I have said in previous post you WILL also be confronted by irate landowners...very rare to gain formal access to anything...pseudo greenies...I know I lived among them for 20 years...and them escaped...
' Ski' said all our posts including getascripters were baloney....well Pal come over to Victoria and find out how well the fossicker/prospector really is catered for and you don't have to "raid" creeks here with one eye on your back or at night just to do it...I thought your Baloney in S.A. was called Fritz are you sure you're a South Aussie or just a detector dealer?..... I couldn't agree more with getascripter and judging by the way she handled her sluice at the recent Laanecoorie Gold Bash 2013 she actually knows what's she's talking about...no Baloney or Fritz!
As with most things 'cash strapped' S.A. is very unenlightened all of course to the detriment of small S.A. country towns which would benefit enomously.....every thing was privatised and flooged off with indecent haste, to pay your unfunded Politicians Bills/Supers after the S.A. State Bank collapse....which is why you are all paying the high prices now for everything including all your National Parks which used to be free until your Pollies could see another desperate Dollar in it by charging everywhere......no baloney..I've never paid one cent in Victoria to enter thousands of acres of gold bearing State Forrests...how does that stack up against your famous Mount Crawford...where there are more Rangers than nuggets...
I suggest the only folk who continue to promote the myth that there is 'detectable' gold in Adelaide Hills/Adelaide environs meaning by using detectors, are the S.A. detector dealers....there is gold in S.A. however it is not on Crown lands or at detectable depths....I would love a dollar every time I have heard a S.A. detector dealer tell some S.A. wannabe gold detectorist that they should mosey up to Echunga or Mount Crawford with their 'noo machines'...."as they are still finding bits"....mushrooms grow year in year out...gold doesn't Pal...generally when near surface stuff is gone, its gone.... Hoo Roo

Hi Larry, thanks for that, might look out gomersal way, i know a couple landowners and my father works out there on a large property.
You sound a bit bitter about SA, I understand, we are the Nanny state for sure. Backwards Government Local and state. As far as local landowners go, there are ways and means of getting them on side, but there are always a few who are set in their ways.

What about Bethany, anyone tried there? that creek runs through some nice country and gets good flow on a wet winter. I ride mountain bikes up the top near Kaiser Stuhl in the forrest and there are chunks of Quartz everywhere in there. I would also like to check Mannum waterfalls as well as the waterways that run from the hills out to the flats at the bottom of accomodation hill down towards Blanchtown.

I actually panned my first bit of colour last night from a sample i grabbed from a creek up in the hills behind the Barossa. Small picker but at least its something.

Random question, do those magic wheel gold spirals actually work? no one seems to have much good to say about them.

Keep those suggestion coming.

G'day Gravelman, if you can gain access then go for it...in years now gone we have found colour/small nuggets in the creeks behind Tanunda back to Greenock, so Bethany should also be a go if you can get in there without buckshot in your bum!.....I gave away all my S.A. research books when I came to Victoria...it's amazing how much gold potential there really is through the Barossa, in  a line all the way back to Castanbul in the Adelaide Hills where good gold was originally found/mined.......much gold was found in the 1850's on in S.A. but you rarely hear about it now because the diggers took off in large droves when they heard what was happening in Victoria!...and much easier to find...the Hills was hard work...other States gold finds at the time were so much more substantial by comparison.....without wishing to repeat myself if you can gain access to any of those areas mentioned you should find colour/nuggets as the areas apart from poor old Echunga and Mount Crawford have not been thrashed...
I'm a tad miffed about S.A. because I lost very substantial savings and my business, at the infamous S.A. State Bank collapse,7 Billion went missing in one tiny State!, and its on record it was caused largely by one Marcus Clarke who promptly declared himself bankrupt to avoid restitution to the State, and it cost Bannon his Premier's job as well as many business's and their Staff's etc and we became a back room to Interstate Business........future generations of South Australians are, and will still be, paying for something that should never have been allowed to happen....
Nothing productive can be achieved for the masses now because of all the pseudo greenies and the famous 'Adelaide Boys Clubs'......IMO
Good luck....Hoo Roo

Larry303 ... you are a breath of fresh air!!! You said it exactly as it is!!!  

Good on you getascripter, no doubt there will be a bounty on my head if I go back over the border now as your Pollies are also very vindictive by nature in protecting their own self interests.....big Carps in their minuscule pond....as Paul Keating once rightly pointed out when it comes to Politicians always back the horse in the race called 'self interest'..it wins every time.....I'm going over to W.A. to prospect, perhaps I should travel at night through the S.A. Everglades....

Gravelman asked if those 'magic wheel gold spirals' actually work...I stood for over half hour at the recent Laanecoorie Gold Bash and watched in hopeful anticipation at one working for display.....Wombat had a cup full of his panned fines from Eldarado which contained much fine gold and of course the pesky black sands,the bain of all panners worldwide.....I was mesmerised watching the fines 'walk' their way up to the centre where it is deposited in a small cup at the rear....with the idea only the gold will be in there as it is of course the heaviest metal.....unfortunately for the machine and the hopeful dealer/seller...the cup contained exactly the same proportion of black sands and gold particles as had been deposited in the bottom by Wombat....instant soft on for us all!.....we all walked away with our $500 plus still in our wallets.....the idea has merit its just in the actual results that fail somewhat...this is only my thoughts from watching an ideal situation and display and the dealer did not really expect Wombat to come over and deposit his Eldarado load so to speak...the dealer had his own fines which had no black sands and had been more or less successful walking the gold up to the centre and into the cup but still not perfect and took forever to happen..how long would it take to process a bucket is anyones guess.......back to the drawing board for me...Hoo Roo

Larry, I am not sure how long since you have been around here but the new generation of farmers whcih i mostly went to school with are a lot more relaxed, and if asked nicely are pretty obliging.
Thanks for the insights i never would have thought to look there.

Will keep you posted, i have some good spots yet to check in the Barossa, ther would be a goldmine of opportunity i think.

 The "black sands from Eldorado " are in fact Tin ! Which also contains ( in certain parts of the creek) ilmenite and corundum.These heavies are surly a curse and if you don't sieve these cons to exactly the same size the spiral wheel will not work . I see in America some use mercury in the process ! I think that is messy and potentially dangerous .  As has been said in posts many times in this forum "Learn to pan" ! Below is a pic of Eldorado gold and tin 




Getting there !




There ya go !






All done with a pan ! No clean up sluice , no spiral wheel , no mercury, no miller table , just practice with a good pan every time you go out ! Practice ! Practice ! Practice !  It's no different when using a detector ! After all they are just tools to use to get some gold ! When I started detecting back in the early 70's I was told " practice till the detector becomes an extension of your arm" same with the pan " practice with the pan till it feels like its a giant hand "

Just be careful swatting flies, or if a boogie's needen attention   Ouch, damn it, gotta remember, it puts the pan down first  

Nice gold Ark  for Ark,   for someday  

You wouldn't believe it. Tonight i was collecting some more material to process and there was an old local guy yabbying where i go. He was so full of useful information on local gold stories and sites i nearly fell over. He showed us where they used to pan successfully in the depression and then took us home and loaned us an old detector.
Then he showed me a nuggy on a necklace that blew me away, it had to weigh as much as my iphone if not more. He also told me about his mate who found it and it turns out i think he works just near me. Couldn't believe it.

Whilst i am here, what is considered a good pan? i have a turbo pan.

gravelman wrote:You wouldn't believe it. Tonight i was collecting some more material to process and there was an old local guy yabbying where i go. He was so full of useful information on local gold stories and sites i nearly fell over. He showed us where they used to pan successfully in the depression and then took us home and loaned us an old detector.
Then he showed me a nuggy on a necklace that blew me away, it had to weigh as much as my iphone if not more. He also told me about his mate who found it and it turns out i think he works just near me. Couldn't believe it.

Whilst i am here, what is considered a good pan? i have a turbo pan.

Mate
Treat this guy like you would like someone to treat you when you get old listen to his stories, I mean really listen opportunities like this do not come around to often, be kind, treat him well, look after him like a brother & learn everything you can, what he can teach you will one day be lost if you do not take the time.

Hey gravelman ... rc62 is absolutely on the money!! This old timer is worth more than his weight in gold !!!! He is an entire "gold mine" of REAL information ... as are many of the old timers!!
 
As much as we love our internet for research, our detectors for "seeing" below the ground, and our sluices for "fishing" out the gold .... NOTHING can beat the knowledge of those who have gone before us, in times where none of this stuff was available ... and yet they cleaned up literally TONS of the stuff  
 
I would be nursing this old fellow in cotton wool and let him relive his past, and that of his predecessors!!
 
Good on the old timers!!!      
 
Ark:  I do ALL of my final clean-ups with a pan! I've got a spiral wheel. I've got the blue bowl. But I don't think either of them are "final cleanup" equipment!! They help bring the amounts of material down to a happily manageable level ... so that I can pan my gold completely clean.

Yeah i will be keeping close with this guy, he's a bit eccentric, but knows stuff about the area. Can't wait to try where he has suggested as it all runs off of the hill where i have found my first few flecks. Not sure about the detector he has loaned me, its fairly basic, might try for coins at the footy oval first.

Ark:  I do ALL of my final clean-ups with a pan! I've got a spiral wheel. I've got the blue bowl. But I don't think either of them are "final cleanup" equipment!! They help bring the amounts of material down to a happily manageable level ... so that I can pan my gold completely clean.


The object is to process the gold in a given area with the least amount of cons ! If you get a system that gives you 3 gms of gold in a cup full of cons to pan off at the end of the day or a system that gives you the same 3 gms of gold with a bucket load of cons yes you are right you would need something more than a pan to cut down the load !

The Gold Hog does leave you with a fair bit of cons. I usually just use the meshed pans to classify the rough stuff from my day's work ... so that really does do a heap of the work for me. Then I run over the "waste" with the pinpointer, just to check!

Remember though, I would probably put through 600ltrs of dirt etc through the GH ... about 8 wheelbarrow loads (100ltr big wheelbarrow) per 6 hour day! 6 (maybe 7) weekend trips to VIC have produced an ounce of fine gold.

Now that summer is coming on, I am putting the Hog in the shed and bringing out the Keene Dry Washer. I was lucky enough to come across a barely used "151", second hand and complete with the air blower, so snapped it up. It's in beautiful condition, so it will be really interesting to see how I go with it!

I might even spend a little time in Sth Australia instead of travelling over the border! While grain carting season is on, and the boys in the family are up north running the trucks/tippers, it would be nice to just drive up there for a week, cook them a couple of decent meals ... and get my fix of gold hunting!!!!     Method in my madness, you ask???? You betcha!!!!

 

in response to previous post about Mongolata, AUCUCO no longer own the lease over Mongolata it has been reverted back to its previous owner Kevin Wallis. This is a working mining lease, no prospecting allowed, all land around the lease is under exploration leases.