Gold detecting - part II
Zot
Posts: 825 ✭✭✭
Continuing the story from my previous gold detecting post
I found my first two small nuggets in Creswick, Victoria and visited the same general area several times thereafter. Some pictures of the scenery:
I probably could have gotten a better picture of the rainbow (avoiding the power line and speed limit sign), but it was getting late in the day, I was exhausted, and my “care factor” was getting low..
Finds were plentiful, but none were gold. My #1 find was 22 cal bullets. Those give a very strong signal.
I dug some of them from great depths, while others were screaming at me near the surface.
I quickly learned that the odds of a very loud target being gold were slim at best. Still, I just couldn’t leave such signals behind. I kept motivating myself with “well, it could be a coin” to keep digging all those loud signals too.
After a bunch of unsuccessful outings in Creswick, I decided to try a different area: Castlemaine, Victoria.
This was partly because I also wanted to see this place from a ‘tourism’ point of view. Castlemaine was the richest alluvial gold field in the history of the world, with plenty of interesting places to see.
I got all maps of the area I could get hold of – topographic, goldfield maps, etc.
Some reading on the Internet suggested that Castlemaine is a rather tough detecting gig these days, as everyone and their dog has detected there a thousand times.
The place is rich with gold-related history. Many of the buildings take you right back in time, like this one:
That’s enough tourist stuff. Back to detecting!
During my walkabouts on a first (unsuccessful) weekend in Castlemaine I came across this spot. Interesting looking, and with detector holes all around. Unfortunately, no gold for me
Before my next outing I was getting a bit desperate. After studying yet more maps, I had my plan made up:
I would spend the weekend in two spots (located closely together) and hit them with everything I've got (small coils/ larger coils, mono coils/DD coils etc.) and not start roaming around no matter what.
Here’s the first location, with my stuff unpacked.
The part of carrying your gear around can easily suck up a lot of energy. The terrain is quite demanding (hills) and weight of the gear adds up.
Even water weighs a lot. Over the course of a day I tend to go through nearly 7 liters of water (~2 US gallons), and it’s not even hot out yet.
Despite some promising faint signals in this area, it didn’t yield any gold.
My other location was this gully. The picture really doesn’t do it justice (way deeper and steeper than the picture suggests)
First thing I found: plenty of quite recent, unfilled detecting holes. Ugh.
I kept filling in holes I came across. I almost felt drawn to those previous holes, as if wanting to find something that the sucker had been close to – but had missed.
After a couple of hours I get a loud signal. “Ugh, another bullet” (replace “Ugh” with politically incorrect word of your choice) is my first thought. I dig it anyway, resulting in this shallow little hole:
A nice little 0.87 gram nugget.
Not much help here for finding the mother lode, as this guy is obviously far away from home. I detected the surrounding area carefully, but found nothing else.
Now, before we kid ourselves into thinking this is easy:
I found two small nuggets back in August, quite soon after getting my gold machine.
After that I struggled: about 50 hours of detecting (over 7 days or so) digging up all sorts of rubbish (sometimes from very deep) and chasing ghosts (ground noise).
Not having detected for gold before, that’s a long stretch and tested my patience a bit.
Sure, I’ve gone long stretches without anything good, but never that long without at least finding some modern coins or some other “non trash” stuff. This time it was rubbish all the way through.
It was also a new, rather unpleasant feeling to detect two straight days, all day, and go home with absolutely nothing.
Here are examples of my other “finds”. These are not all the targets I dug (not even close), but it’s a quite representative sample. Interestingly, I haven't found a single coin yet.
On the top there’s iron and other junk, large and small.
Bottom left: bullets and casings.
Bottom right: hot rocks, ironstone, etc.
Happy hunting!
-Z
Minelab: GPX 5000, Excalibur II, Explorer SE. White's: MXT, PI Pro
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Comments
There might well be more on the side of that gully than in the bottom.
Perhaps the gold was deposited on the top of the hill and has been gently moving downhill into the
bottom.
Just a thought.
bob
Ricko - five and seven gram nuggets are impressive indeed, congrats on those! I will now try to break the much more modest one gram barrier.
As for where else to try: Good suggestions! I also detected up the sides of the gully (the nugget just happened to be at the very bottom). Still need to go back and complete that task, as there's a lot of ground to cover.
I also carry a pan in case I come across any interesting drops/holes with running water nearby (like in the picture below).
I'm often tempted to pull out the pan whenever I see water, as you're almost guaranteed to at least get something that way, and have to keep telling myself that I haven't come here for flys--t.
post. Thanks !!!
<< <i>Dig a bunch of gravel/dirt out of the stream bed right below that large rock vein to the left of the picture.... any gold nuggets would have fallen right there... could be some goodies hiding in that spot... Cheers, RickO >>
I'd try on the upstream side as well as that rock dam may have not allowed some to flow over.
bob
Man, I'm sorry I missed this. Where was I? Off being a Yeti, I suppose.
Boy, that looks like some hard work.
Your first picture looks eerily like a site I hunted here.
I don't have the matching photo, alas, but here is one from a clearing at the edge of those same woods.
I know a bunch of trees looks pretty much the same to most people, but I'm really startled by how much that pine forest on the other side of the world looks so much like a site I hunted here in Georgia. You could have switched my other (not shown) picture with yours and I wouldn't have noticed the difference.
Congrats on those nuggets! I know you worked really hard for 'em.
Good on you, mate!