My gold show is not one spot, it comprises an area of country that carries two types of alluvial and some reef gold. The chunky smooth alluvial is primarily old gold deposited in paleo channels. The more recent alluvial is shed from reefs and is spikier and follows the classic triangle pattern from the source. In most cases that source is gone. Sometimes when you are lucky you electronically loam and find one that is still shedding. Last season, I got onto a run of gold in a creek that didn't make sense. I was working old wash in an old paleo channel we found that carried very nice and quite rounded nuggety gold. It was clearly old gold but then I started getting some spikier bits amongst it. They got more abundant as I worked upstream and I knew (hoped) there was a source there somewhere. It took about a month but after a lot of systematic searching I tracked it down - it was in the bottom of a creek. When you do find one, you dig it out, dolly it up, pan it off, melt it down and pour a bar. In this case the gold was in decomposed ironstone and also in a quartz reef running at a different angle. There was only about 6 oz in the material I dug out but it came from only about 1 kg of rock. I'd be a rich man if I had just one tonne of rocks like that! But, I got about 1/2 oz from a bucket of dirt/rubble that I put aside as I dug the rich stuff out. I found see the gold was disseminated and specks were in just about all the little stones in the bucket. I then dug a few small costeans across the run of the country and took samples for analysis. So I know there is gold in this mineralised section but there is not much tonnage there. It is in basalt and dips at about 45 degrees to the east. I took some basalt and crushed and panned it and got some colours which surprised me, so I took some proper samples and the good news is there is 0.5g/t in basalt from the underside of the reef and 5g/t in the basalt on the top side. How far it goes from there is anyones guess but I should find out this season.
Anyway I have attached a few photos to give you a feel for the country and some of the better finds. You will see one of my camps, the excavator, dry blower, etc. The night sky is amazing and some sunsets are surreal. It gets hot though, into the 40's, and can be very windy, and fire in spinifex is always a worry. We nearly lost our camp twice. There's some rounded specimens that shed from reef, and some old alluvial nuggets in my hand. Their larger one was stained red when I dug it out of a bar in a paleo creek and hadn't moved in a very long time. The reality though is that the vast vast majority of the gold I find is the size of the speck in my hand and its damn hard work. But you always live in hope. My theme song, that plays in my head most mornings, is Chris Rea's "Lucky day". Good luck to you all.
