Little micro patch

[Smigo]

Someone found a little micro patch last week. Just above a very, very small surfaced area about the size of a suburban house block. All the nuggets were down about 12 to 16 inches and found in red ironstone clay. Some quartz but not a lot. The patch was only about 100 foot long and 15 to 20 foot wide. It was found in Victorian, nugget or nothing ground. Which is typical of some of our areas. Cool, was not another detector hole in sight, and not a detector hole in sight when finished All up 59 grams, best bit 16.5.

 

[steve herschbach]

Excellent finds, always nice to see gold!

 

[Robert2300]

Cool. Kind a reminds me of my gold fillings. -)

 

[Smigo]

Ha, I once knew a bloke that had his teeth filled with gold that he found. He went to a dentist and asked if he could do it, and did. Classic!

 

[Hoser John]

Great finds,now break out s steel rake and drag some overburden off and you may be very pleased with the results as a city block is a HUGE area to be 100% cleaned out. Great lookn' nuggets-John

 

[Smigo]

Nah, area was only the size of a typical Aussie house block. Small front yard, small backyard and house in the middle. Small run between two small hills. Its one of those areas where the shallowest ground is near the base of the hill and between that point and the top is actually some deeper ground. On the two in line hill lines is an ironstone reef that would cut directly through that deeper section and its from there that I would place my money on it being shed from. There are some places where I go where the shallow surfacing has actually deepened when it had been followed or traced uphill by the old day miners. Below the patch it then drops into a bit deeper ground. This type of situation leaves just very small patches in shallow ground that may have detectable gold. Raked for zilch!

 

[JimGilmore]

What happens if you grab some dirt from arounf the nuggets ? any smaller gold nearby ?

 

[Smigo]

No , very little scope in some of these areas for small or fine gold. There are some areas where there is small and fine and then you get others where there isn't. That's why hunting in some places in Australia can be so good. The old timers didn't or couldn't get any colour when they sunk a test hole because the ground, gold there, was patchy and it was nugget or nothing situation. In the old records here you often read of them like this, one party sunk a hole and bottomed out on splendid wash with nuggets showing freely in it, the party next to them sunk to bottom and never found a colour, two claims down (these are just small claims about 12 foot by 12 foot for example in shallowish ground) they sunk on nuggets weighing many ounces each. Or you will read of nuggets found in the wash with very little if any fines in the surrounding clays and gravels. That's the nature at times of our nugget bearing areas. Plenty of places had both fine and course but nearly as many didn't.