thought on tacking worked ullies

I am doing some trips to an area with a strong alluvial past, including for course gold. The area has many gullies that have been well and truly raked (I think that is the term). They are quite wide (up to 20 metres in places and seem to wander all over the place. Some of them are quite deep to at least three metres. There are many piles of rocks (but not fine tailings) in opened out gully areas, and lots of shafts around as well (outside of the gullies). There is also a lot of steep slopes below said areas towards a river some 30metres below. For a few days I've been working the bottoms of the gullies, and the faces of the banks, with my 11 inch mono on the 5000, but nothing yet. The area is pretty large so I have been thinking about concentrating on the areas between the gullies and shafts as well as the banks, perhaps using big coil (17 or 24 NF elip). No mullock heaps much to speak of, looks like all the wash has been sluiced away just leaving the big rocks all piled up. There is still dirt in the bottom of the gullies, with some bedrock here and there.
Any opinions on this strategy ?

Picture shows gully. All of the area in the middle has been dug out. If I understand it properly the floors of the gullies may have been ‘ground’ sluiced. If they have been ground sluiced is there likely to be much AU there ?



Next picture shows edge of shallow gully.

Howdy dogman,

A picture speaks a 1000 words normally


To me it sounds like the old timers were going for old elevated river alluvial down 2 metres or so. The shafts were probably to get to the edges of the wash where it was too deep to ground sluice as you call it commonly referred to as "surfacing" .

The surfaced area is likely to still hold quite a few small pieces of colour randomly here and there if it is shale/ slate bars.
If its granite or other smooth rock? you will be lucky but they never got it all!

Try to work out how the gold got to where it was and you might pick up on something the old timers missed. Gold has been found on top of ridges before too!

Hopefull you can get your photos up. Use the "host an image" toolbar to upload the image to the internet, and then "copy" and paste into the "image" toolbar to load onto your post. Or Stoppsy has a utube somewhere of how to do it step by step.

good luck. FF

https://s1143.photobucket.com/albums/n623/Imadogman2/

I would keep at it with the small coil but keep out of the creek. Maybe work the tops of the banks around the back of old trees or shallower ground parallel to the workings. Look around for any sign of a major flood line and check along it's high-low bank where it turns. Also areas that the trees have very stunted growth. But take care it looks like big cat country to me , and watch out for BIG SNAKES!

Good Luck LT

Gday Imadogman,
Was it nuggety ground?
I agree with Lazy Tom and detect the mullock piles and any adjacent shallow virgin wash.Also check the sides of the test holes(as long as the holes arent too deep).The creek banks also look the goods,and even better if you can see a line of wash being erroded out.
Lots of fallen timber to hide all those nuggets there as well,so maybe move some off the mullock piles.The next nugget found under debris wont be the last

thanks for those comments. The area was fairly well known for nuggets but I am not sure about this particular bit of the field. The alluvials in the district were generally considered patchy but there are many newspaper reports of multi oz nuggets.

It is staggering to mentally calculate the volume of excavation through these broad gullies. It seems to have all disappeared -- down the creek bank via sluice or race I think. Just left shafts and piles of rock tailings in the bottom. I cannot imagine that anyone would do the amount of work on display here if they were not getting a reasonable return. The bush near the river is just simply too thick to get at the balnks let alone to see if they have been eroded. The banks you see in the pictures are the edges of the sluiced out gullies.

I had a second look at those pics mate. Looks like some nice ground.....
That said,if you detected the rock piles or gully banks for a few days and didnt find any nuggets,its possible that there are none to be had.
Maybe those diggings were in an area that only had fine gold. It must have been fairly rich as they smashed the place,and got me thinking more about the reason there is no piles of overburden around.
Diggings that had mainly fine gold around the Turon fields(as an example)were either sluiced or all the dirt was removed and washed. The only remains are the piles of country rock and/or slate.
Fields that had nuggety gold at depth have mullock piles.The old diggers were only interested in that certain layer(or multi layers in areas of false bottoms) of wash and the rest of the dirt was barren.
If i detected there for a week and didnt get a nugget,i would do some test pans and I`d bet they would show colours.
Good luck and i hope you score a patch there.

hi imadogman area looks good do some panning around and see what u pick up and check the head of the diggings
looks like the area south of the town mongarlowe off the northham road some of that area only had fine gold but a lot of it,good for a sluice , happy hunting

Hey ima dog man did anything ever come of that area how did ya go

It does look like interesting ground....all be a lot of growth & ground cover. I have to agree with you that they wouldnt have done all that work for nothing. You have been given some good advice. Pick one of the likely looking piles & rake away some of the twigs & litter, move the fallen branches & even rake down the pile a bit. Is there any exposed bed rock that looks to have gold trapping abilities? Clear an area & use your smallest coil.

Good luck

JW