HOW TO DIG FOR GOLD.

Man this is one great yarn with information which still holds true today. cheers

HOW TO DIG FOR GOLD.

BY AN OLD DIGGER.

There are many men walking about the city of Melbourne who read of gold being got daily, and would like to go and do likewise. But they don't know how to go about it, being perfectly ignorant of everything connected with digging, If they want to learn to be carpenters or bricklayers or plumbers there are plenty of teachers. Do they wish to study agriculture there are two colleges. But if they want to learn practical alluvial
gold-digging, the greatest and most profitable trade, that has yielded 325 millions in 40 years in Australia, there is no one to instruct them. There is no "gold chair" at the University. The Working Men's College doesn't teach digging, and the race of old alluvial gold miners is nearly if not quite, extinct. Ah! if these hardy old fellows with all their practical knowledge and experience bud but taught their sons the tricks of their trade what a different story there would have been to tell to-day ! The great bush with its free air, healthy life, and independent existence was not good enough for the descendants of the pioneer diggers factory life in town working for wages they hankered after and they got it. Much good it has done them.

You want to go digging, and you are ignorant even of the A B C of it. You have never been further away from the city than Brighton Beach. Very well, then I will endeavour to explain the why gold is sought for and dug as we did it in the old days.
In the first place, if you intend seriously to prospect, you can't put up at hotels. You want a swag. This should consist of two pairs of blankets, two course flannel shirts, two Crimean shirts, half-a-dozen pairs of socks, a couple of towels, and a pair of mole skin trousers, a billy and pannikin, a frying pan, a bucket, a tin dish (this dish has sloping slides, a rim at the edge, and is about 2 ft. in diameter), a saw, hammer headed tomahawk, some nails, a couple of black-handled dinner knives, a pick and shovel, a compass, and as much tucker as you can carry. If you can afford a horse (and you can pick up one for a pound or two nowadays), so much the better, us then you can carry a small six by eight tent and plenty of tucker, ie flour, tea, sugar, salt, soup, and baking soda. A gun in the day time and a noose at night will provide you with flesh food, and you must trust to luck to come across some place where you can get a bit of salt or fresh meat occasionally. Now, most of the tools above described speak for themselves, but the use of the tin dish require explanation. It is for prospecting. That is to say, to wash the soil in which you think there is gold. This will be further illustrated later on. It is also useful to make your damper or "Johnnycake," in which serves you in place of yeast bread. A Johnnycake is made thus: Put a couple of handfuls of flour into your dish, with a good pinch of salt and baking soda,' Add water till it works to a stiff paste. Divide it into three parts anti flatten out into cakes about half an inch thick. Dust a little four into your frying-pan and put the cake in. Cook it slowly over the fire, taking care it does not burn, and tossing it over again and again. When nearly done stand it against a slide in front of the lire, and let it finish baking while you cook the other two. These, with a piece of wallaby and a billy of tea, are a sweet meal enough after a hard day's work.

Now, where to look for gold. Well, remember this, that, with the exception of iron, no metal is more widely distributed, and that in nearly every creek gold will be found, it not in one spot in another. It is there, depend upon it. All it requires is a little perseverance and " nous." The easiest and simplest of all methods is "fossicking." An old diggings is the place for this work, because there you will lean the kind of country, formation, and spots to look for gold when you want to break new ground. "Fossicking" means going over old workings, turning up boulders, and taking the clay from beneath them, exploring fissures in the rock, and scraping out the stuff with your table knife, using your pick to help matters, Pulling up of trees, and clearing all soil from the roots, scraping the bottoms of deserted holes, and generally keeping your eye about for little bits of ground left between workings by earlier miners who were in too great a hurry looking after the big fish to attend much to small fry. All this material you have gathered you put into your bucket and when it is full you take it and your tin dish to the bank of the creek for washing or "panning out Into the dish you put half your bucket of stuff and place the dish on the bank just so hint the water can wash into it now with both hands (the fingers open) commence to chum the stuff vigorously breaking up the large lumps of clay and throwing out the stones as they come to the surface let plenty of water into the dish but do not allow any of the material to escape out of it Alter churning for a few minutes take the dish by the sides and give it a circular swirling motion, still letting the water well into it churn again with jour hands throwing out the smaller stones repeat these processes until you have got down to about a handful of fine stuff keep this at one end and lap in about a pint of water Make this gently rotate round the dish, and it will gradually wash away the clay, leaving the black sand exposed, in which the gold, if any, will be seen Don’t be disheartened if you should not come across a nugget fist time think yourself lucky if you get a good "colour that is half a dozen specks this tells you, you are near it. The next dish, and the next, and a dozen others may give you nothing But a quarter of an ounce may be at the bottom of your twentieth dish, and this means tucker, and a bit over for a fortnight ' This is fossicking, and the man who goes about it by himself is called “a hatter”. If the field you are working on turns out good enough the tin dish will be found a very slow process. You will want something quicker, which will wash a bucket of stuff in half the time a tub and cradle now are the things half a barrel will serve as a tub the cradle is a very simple matter to make the ordinary household cinder sifter, with an end out, the bottom lengthened and fitted with ripples, being the model the tray at the top, instead of being of open wire work, is made of perforated iron with holes about the size of small marbles into this, after being well puddled at the tub, the stuff is put, and as water is poured on to it from the billy it is rocked backwards and forwards, the big stones being thrown out, and the fine stuff falling through the sieve and along the ledges to the riffles, which catch and hold the gold.

After having learned so much, the desire will come to break new ground If you have a mate all the better. The chances of a "big thing, and the very biggest things are with in your reach are greater in new workings there are plenty of creeks in this country that have only so far been scratched a hole sunk here and there and abandoned no luck, no perseverance, and so the place has been set down us a duffer, or, us the old diggers more expressive term had it, a shicer. The selection of a creek must be left a matter entirely for the intending digger to decide for himself all that can be done here is to indicate the way gold should be looked for on the field. A shaft has to be sunk to got to the "bottom where the gold is to be found now, bottom is rather a difficult theory for the green digger to decide on, and has often deceived old practical miners say, for instance, that your shaft (and it should be three foot six by two feet- Chinamen sink round shafts, and tiny get down much quicker) is going down by the side of a bank whereon clay or sandy slate dipping at a slight angle crops out. It is almost certain that the bottom will also be slate, covered by a layer of pipeclay of varying thickness. It is in this clay that the gold will be found, especially when the clay is packed tight between the fissures and crevices of the slate. Here the pick is required to break up some of the bedrock, or bottom, for the cradle if there is gold in it not a scrap should be lost, for it is the easiest thing possible to miss a pennyweight or two the main object in sinking is to get on the gutter, that is the deepest part of the ancient buried river where, the mineral impregnated water for ages has been flowing and depositing the gold, and left it patchy, thick, scant, or not at all It must also be borne in mind that the present bed of the creek or river is not the true one, and may be only a channel relatively speaking, of today Therefore, the diggers object is to find the ancient watercourse, which, may hap, be some distance from the present stream, or only a few feet away Sinking a shaft is a dip in the lucky bag, you may bottom dead on a golden gutter, or you may not If you do and it is wide, you are in the best of luck If narrow, follow it up , it may open out, and it may run for miles. I have seen pipeclay out of a gutter with gold in it like plums in a Christmas pudding. Sometimes, on bottoming your shaft, the pipeclay, although not carrying gold to any extent, may yet look so promising that it is worth while driving This, if the reef dips means following it down by means of a small tunnel, sending the stuff in a bucket up to your mate on top, in order to get it out of the way.

Very often surface gold is to be found on sloping river sides, and as these deposits are generally shallow, "sluicing is the means used to obtain the metal for the purpose of sluicing it will be necessary to have sluice boxes, and these can be easily knocked up they are male of inch and a half planks, a foot in width The length is about five feet there is a bottom and two sides, the sides being held together by two ties nailed across at about four inches up at either end a false bottom, that is an inch and a half plank with holes the size of a crown piece bored through it in rows, with 3m spaces between each hole is placed in the box, butting against a narrow piece of wood nailed across the mouth culled a riffle the false bottom is generally in two pieces, with a riffle between them as well as at the end of the box a string of these boxes, with sapling supports at the joints is set from the hill side to the creek at a slight dip, say 2 ft for the whole distance. It is now necessary to bring a head of water through the boxes. For this purpose a race that is a ditch a foot square is started at a point sufficiently high up the river to allow of its being brought along the side of the hill to the mouth of the boxes. When all is ready and the water begins to flow slowly through the boxes, if there are two mates at work one shovels in the stuff while the other forks, that is, with a five pronged fork slightly curved he walks up and down the edges of the boxes and churns the mullock, doing with the fork what your outspread fingers did in the tin dish. The fine stuff and the gold falls through the holes in the false bottom and lodges against the riffles or ripples to clean up the bottoms are taken out and the ripples cleared.
A favourite theory of diggers is that all gold comes from reefs, because reef gold sometimes with quart? attached to it is found on alluvial workings. But this is certainly not so as the gold are quite distinct the reef gold is fine, fantastic in shape, sharp edged, and inferior in quality to alluvial. Very probably the reef gold may have drifted down from quarts veins worn away by the process of time together with the surface of the hills that carried them where quarts gold is found amongst the alluvial in all probability reefs will be found in the neighbourhood. It will always be worth while prospecting for these. This may be treated in another paper.

Mention has been made of snaring wallaby for food when a butchers meat is scarce and there is not much time to do any shooting. Along the banks of creeks will be noticed narrow tracks coming down from the hills and leading to the water These are kangaroo or wallaby water tracks to snare them take two sticks about a foot in length, with a slit at the top. Stick these at either side of the track facing each other. Now make a strong, noose, and fix it upright in the track about 3 inches off the ground, held by the slits in the sticks tie the other end to a tree. The kangaroo coming slowly down on all fours gets his head well through the noose before he feels the strain then he tries to clear, and of course strangles himself.

Newspaper Article

Camperdown Chronicle
1936
http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/

You've done it again James. Top read and very useful and relevant information.
Love this line - quote - It is there, depend upon it. All it requires is a little perseverance and " nous."
Thanks for sharing (again)

Anyone for Damper with your Wallaby stew? Thanks James.

Top stuff james keep up the great work a pleasure reading your posts
Goldrocs

Hi James,

As a newbie I have to say after reading your post/that article, I just learnt alot.

Thank you and keep up the great work.

Nature Pete.

Thanks chaps, you know the information which is freely given by all the experienced members to the new comers. And the way the guy’s will at times go out of their way to help a new comer. It is that which makes this site so special I am impressed indeed.
I must thank admin for making these pages available to us, to bring Detecting & Wet Water prospecting under the one roof can only help all concerned in regards to information, location and a stronger knowledge base overall.
cheers

Billy wrote: - It is there, depend upon it. All it requires is a little perseverance and " nous."

Grin yep me too, and it is so true!

Bump. ... I do like the above yarn it is great reading. cheers