Narrowing down the Odds

Most alluvial Gold is very fine and it's usually extracted via heavy machinery (Most mining companies make their money this way). They still find MASSIVE nuggets deep down when mining the finer Gold so you may be right in the long run! This is the way most of the world's Gold production is achieved so most Gold jewellery in stores and even bullion is generated via the extraction of fine Gold. Nuggets can form in a variety of natural processes. Sometimes nuggets are found in very strange places (usually carried there by people or natural erosion). There's also a theory that SOME types of smaller gold nuggets are the result of waste excretion by a species of bacteria. This is still being debated but it's possible.

Most of the Nuggety Gold is the result of eroded quartz reefs where Gold was deposited in fissures and cracks inside the quartz. The original fine particles were deposited in the soils via volcanic action and these particles are then concentrated via moisture and pressure... and then get forced into cracks in the quartz crystals. The area cools down, the quartz gets exposed and eventually crumbles and breaks down to release the gold which forms nuggets. These heavy Gold chunks fall away to be found later in the lower lying geographical areas.

The fine alluvial Gold is the most common form and this accounts for the majority of the volume of our Goldfields. Nuggets are also classified as Alluvial Gold. But Nugget concentrations are restricted to specific areas though so the BEST place to find nuggets is in districts where other people have previously found nuggets. There's literally billions worth of Gold just out of reach of the current range of detectors. That's why each time a new model is announced, the experienced nugget hunters immediately buy them up and scour the known and "supposedly picked clean" areas where they detect and dig up all the newly detectable nuggets. Hence a well worked spot these days is usually pretty well worked. Still, people miss a LOT of nuggets because it's hard to get it all! But with the MASSIVE volume of gold bearing land here in Australia, you could detect every day for tens of thousands of years and still not cover but a fraction of it all. There's usually a good chance of finding nuggets wherever finer gold is found... UNLESS the finer gold was washed a long way away to a new location. An example is the nearby Shoalhaven river which gives up a LOT of coarse fine Gold to sluice operators and panners ... yet I haven't heard of many (any) nuggets being found there. Some people have made a LOT of money panning the fine Gold there. But a detectorist would be better advised to seek places where nuggets have already been found.

Or you can do what I enjoy doing: Look for new nugget patches which have remained undiscovered. Those tend to be pretty lucrative since there's usually an abundance of good targets there. I've heard of a handfull of reliable accounts of Nuggets near Cootamundra just north of the main town. So that might be one of your closest options to start with. A lot of old cottages out there have collapsed and eroded in the region and I have heard of detectorists finding jars and old cans FILLED with Gold dust, small and large nuggets and small leather purses full of Gold Sovereigns (deliberately buried decades ago) whilst detecting these ruins.

nero_design

Gday All,
Funny you mentioned the Shoalhaven Jefgold.
I have been thinking about that waterway for a while.Being a fairly rich system in terms of course alluvial gold i have wondered about the lower sections of the river and their hidden secrets.
As you know,many of the globes richest rivers often carried their alluvial gold to the ocean during big floods. Beaches adjacent to the river mouths are known to hold good alluvial gold deposts such as some in the south island of N.Z and California in the US.
Gets me thinking that there may be substantial deposits in the lower saltwater sections of the Shoalhaven waiting to be found.

Hi Jefgold

That's an interesting post. Would you know roughly how much gold a panner would expect for a days work in that river? I know here in the UK if you were to get 0.5 - 1 gram a day you would consider that succesful

Hi Jefgold,
Or is that Nero Design!!!!
Ron,or is that Authere!!

I don't wanna be Ron anymore, sorry Gefgold.
(other self)-He QUOTED you idiot!!