Post by cronicbadger on Sept 23, 2019 22:18:39 GMT 10
I went up to Uralla in August for a few days, followed by another short trip in September.
AUGUST TRIP
The town is 20km South of Armidale, on the New England Highway, and was once the hub of the gold rushes of the New England district in New South Wales. There is still gold to be found, but it has learned to hide well.
The drought has been bad, and the Rocky River (the upper reaches of the might Gwyder River), is barely flowing. I had to use the entire flow of the river (about 30cm width) to run my sluice.
I visited my favourite gully, hidden in an overgrown patch of dry scrub hundreds of metres away from the main camping areas. It had been smashed. Torn apart. Carefully classified piles of rocks, stones, pebbles and holes littered the confines of what had once been a safe haven for topaz, zircon, garnet and gold. Like that gully, I was gutted, and went elsewhere to find the shiny stuff.
I explored and tested some of the dry gullies deeper in the scrub, where only snakes and ticks would dare tread (or slither). The order of the day was dry classification from likely looking potholes and crevices, then back to a stagnant pond to pan it off.
My luck was not with me that weekend and I brought back very little from the trip, but did manage to try some new spots and experiment with some equipment I'd built.
SEPTEMBER TRIP
I had the opportunity to spend the weekend in Uralla mid-September, so took along my equipment and a renewed sense of curiosity regarding where all the gold had gone. Did it burrow deeper in Winter, hiding from the cold? Perhaps spring would see it poke its little head up from its burrows, to sniff the air, to listen for approaching predators.
Alas! Any precautions the gold of the Rocky River had taken were no match for the misfortune that was walking slowly towards it, hauling a pan, sieves, bucket and shovel.
And so I dug.
It was a lovely morning. I had walked away from the camping area into the rougher parts and, despite the unlikely-looking spot, decided it was as good a place as any to do a few test-pans.
My shovel bit into the earth and lifted out dark gravel from what had seemingly been light, sandy earth. Heavies. My small testing pan swirled a few times and a hundred small but blinding golden lights dazzled my eyes. Another hundred lights joined them. I backwashed to reveal more. And lost count.
My first test-pan of the trip had revealed at least 100 specks. Another flick of the pan to wash back the lighter stuff then revealed twice as many. The third backwash revealed even more. And that was the tip of the iceberg.
A fluke? Another test pan a meter away gave the same result - well over a hundred specks revealed in just one backwash before the contents were deposited in my "concentrates bucket".
The third, fourth and fifth test-pans resulted in 100+ specks each, and a series of exclamatory profanities from the panner.
By the tenth test-pan I was getting bored of all the gold. The stuff was becoming annoying by that point since much of it was sticking to the bottom of my deeply-scratched pan as I was trying to empty the concentrated material into my bucket. I was even finding specks clinging to my shovel, so had to wash that carefully every time I dropped material into the pan (only 10 times in total though, but I get bored easily).
It was obvious I'd found an interesting patch of material, so filed it in my memory to visit next trip.
I next tried a bit of crevicing. There was a likely candidate nearby. Different material was found here: mostly black with red spots and a few yellow flecks - ground up basalt, garnets, and some flaky gold (unusual, since the gold around here is mostly flour-like in consistency).
There were also some gemstones found, such as zircon and sapphire, including small, long sapphire crystals. Another find was a nugget/slug of what I guess to be ilmenite - several centimetres in diameter, shiny, metallic, and heavy. Yet another crystal is also a bit of a mystery - small, hexagonal rod, of an odd yellowish-greenish-orangish colour that's hard to nail down.
I haven't separated the gold and gems from my concentrates yet. Most of the small gems I described above were picked straight from the sieve, shovel or the test-pan. I'll make some photos available when I can.
So, all-in-all, my second trip turned out to be fun. Only a couple of hours were spent fossicking, but they were surprising and productive.
AUGUST TRIP
The town is 20km South of Armidale, on the New England Highway, and was once the hub of the gold rushes of the New England district in New South Wales. There is still gold to be found, but it has learned to hide well.
The drought has been bad, and the Rocky River (the upper reaches of the might Gwyder River), is barely flowing. I had to use the entire flow of the river (about 30cm width) to run my sluice.
I visited my favourite gully, hidden in an overgrown patch of dry scrub hundreds of metres away from the main camping areas. It had been smashed. Torn apart. Carefully classified piles of rocks, stones, pebbles and holes littered the confines of what had once been a safe haven for topaz, zircon, garnet and gold. Like that gully, I was gutted, and went elsewhere to find the shiny stuff.
I explored and tested some of the dry gullies deeper in the scrub, where only snakes and ticks would dare tread (or slither). The order of the day was dry classification from likely looking potholes and crevices, then back to a stagnant pond to pan it off.
My luck was not with me that weekend and I brought back very little from the trip, but did manage to try some new spots and experiment with some equipment I'd built.
SEPTEMBER TRIP
I had the opportunity to spend the weekend in Uralla mid-September, so took along my equipment and a renewed sense of curiosity regarding where all the gold had gone. Did it burrow deeper in Winter, hiding from the cold? Perhaps spring would see it poke its little head up from its burrows, to sniff the air, to listen for approaching predators.
Alas! Any precautions the gold of the Rocky River had taken were no match for the misfortune that was walking slowly towards it, hauling a pan, sieves, bucket and shovel.
And so I dug.
It was a lovely morning. I had walked away from the camping area into the rougher parts and, despite the unlikely-looking spot, decided it was as good a place as any to do a few test-pans.
My shovel bit into the earth and lifted out dark gravel from what had seemingly been light, sandy earth. Heavies. My small testing pan swirled a few times and a hundred small but blinding golden lights dazzled my eyes. Another hundred lights joined them. I backwashed to reveal more. And lost count.
My first test-pan of the trip had revealed at least 100 specks. Another flick of the pan to wash back the lighter stuff then revealed twice as many. The third backwash revealed even more. And that was the tip of the iceberg.
A fluke? Another test pan a meter away gave the same result - well over a hundred specks revealed in just one backwash before the contents were deposited in my "concentrates bucket".
The third, fourth and fifth test-pans resulted in 100+ specks each, and a series of exclamatory profanities from the panner.
By the tenth test-pan I was getting bored of all the gold. The stuff was becoming annoying by that point since much of it was sticking to the bottom of my deeply-scratched pan as I was trying to empty the concentrated material into my bucket. I was even finding specks clinging to my shovel, so had to wash that carefully every time I dropped material into the pan (only 10 times in total though, but I get bored easily).
It was obvious I'd found an interesting patch of material, so filed it in my memory to visit next trip.
I next tried a bit of crevicing. There was a likely candidate nearby. Different material was found here: mostly black with red spots and a few yellow flecks - ground up basalt, garnets, and some flaky gold (unusual, since the gold around here is mostly flour-like in consistency).
There were also some gemstones found, such as zircon and sapphire, including small, long sapphire crystals. Another find was a nugget/slug of what I guess to be ilmenite - several centimetres in diameter, shiny, metallic, and heavy. Yet another crystal is also a bit of a mystery - small, hexagonal rod, of an odd yellowish-greenish-orangish colour that's hard to nail down.
I haven't separated the gold and gems from my concentrates yet. Most of the small gems I described above were picked straight from the sieve, shovel or the test-pan. I'll make some photos available when I can.
So, all-in-all, my second trip turned out to be fun. Only a couple of hours were spent fossicking, but they were surprising and productive.
