Post by cronicbadger on Nov 14, 2023 20:49:02 GMT 10
I couldn't resist the opportunity to head up to Uralla again. It was the middle of a fairly mild winter, so there was not much chance of freezing my limbs off in a creek, or being trapped under a snowdrift. My hasty risk-assessment complete, I loaded the car and sped off northward.
I arrived in the evening and went to bed, anticipating an early start. At 8:00am (that's an early start for me!) I noticed my car had some sparkly accessories draped over it. Hmmm.
After a breakfast of champions, I headed out to the fossicking reserve through which the mighty Rocky River wends its way. It's quite pretty, and there is a lot of super fine gold sitting on the bedrock here - under three or four metres of sand.
You might be wondering why its named Rocky River. Sorry, I have no idea.
Being one to eschew the more popular fossicking areas, I headed to my own secret gully upstream. Of course someone had trashed the place, torn the banks away and left little piles of of stones from their sieves. In previous years I'd pulled out some nice material from these gullies - even the buried remains of an old 1950s Holden that my metal detector pinged just 10 metres up the hill.
So I soldiered on, and eventually my test pans began like this.
After a while my test pans began to look like THIS! Seriously, one single pan! Which didn't last once I'd cleaned out the small river pothole it came from.
Uralla's waterways contain most of the major types of gems except emerald. I picked up a few of them, including sapphire, zircon, garnet, topaz and black spinel. Check out this dishy dish.
Here's a closer view of the sapphires.
And a closer view of some garnets, spinel and other odds and ends.
But what about the gold? Well, the cleanup revealed 1.3g.
But of course, the true treasures of Uralla are the beautiful sunsets it bestows upon its visitors.
Actually, on second thoughts, the treasure truly is the gold and gems that can be found there.
I arrived in the evening and went to bed, anticipating an early start. At 8:00am (that's an early start for me!) I noticed my car had some sparkly accessories draped over it. Hmmm.
After a breakfast of champions, I headed out to the fossicking reserve through which the mighty Rocky River wends its way. It's quite pretty, and there is a lot of super fine gold sitting on the bedrock here - under three or four metres of sand.
You might be wondering why its named Rocky River. Sorry, I have no idea.
Being one to eschew the more popular fossicking areas, I headed to my own secret gully upstream. Of course someone had trashed the place, torn the banks away and left little piles of of stones from their sieves. In previous years I'd pulled out some nice material from these gullies - even the buried remains of an old 1950s Holden that my metal detector pinged just 10 metres up the hill.
So I soldiered on, and eventually my test pans began like this.
After a while my test pans began to look like THIS! Seriously, one single pan! Which didn't last once I'd cleaned out the small river pothole it came from.
Uralla's waterways contain most of the major types of gems except emerald. I picked up a few of them, including sapphire, zircon, garnet, topaz and black spinel. Check out this dishy dish.
Here's a closer view of the sapphires.
And a closer view of some garnets, spinel and other odds and ends.
But what about the gold? Well, the cleanup revealed 1.3g.
But of course, the true treasures of Uralla are the beautiful sunsets it bestows upon its visitors.
Actually, on second thoughts, the treasure truly is the gold and gems that can be found there.
