Gold Fever! Aussie Style
By Alan Hassell
? 3rd April 1986 Published in the English Treasure Hunting Magazine
copyright no part may be reproduced without written permission
Thanks to Queen Victoria, a special charter gave Australian's the right to to prospect ad mine for gold. Anyone can do it - even visitors to the country. All you need to go prospecting is to obtain from the Mines Department a Miner's Right.
Most States have them and are available for a small sum of about ten dollars about (?5) depending on what state you live in.
Unlike England land owners do not own the minerals in the ground, this includes anything that might be lost I the ground. Although with a history of just over 200 years you don't expect to find coins of an earlier vintage to be found there.
Being one of the largest continents in the world, vast area's are crown land, although some of this land is leased to farmers who might attempt to bluff you its private land, you can still legally ed prospect quite openly.
The Miner's Right also allows the owner to peg a claim and to mine the area. For this reason metal detecting in Australia is a very popular activity. Most geologists agree that there is more gold in Australia than has ever been taken out.
Many of the old timer's lacked any knowledge of mining or geology and as a result a great deal of gold bearing wash-dirt was thrown out of the shafts to become part of the mullock heaps that are now found on many of the old gold mining area's.
As a result many fine gold nuggets have come to be found over the years.
Millions of yeaqrs ago numerous geological changes took place. Rivers changed course and direction. Many of these rivers were covered in sedimentation laid down by rain and floods. Leaving the gold bearing gravels hundreds of feet below the surface in some cases.
By sinking shafts the miners were able to intersect these old river beds or leads as they were known and extract by means of crushing, sluicing and panning off the gold.
There are area's where water is such a scarce commodity that alternative methods of gold recovery had to be devised. Dry Blowing as it is known is believed to have originated in Egypt and was known as winnowing.
Natives in remote parts of Africa still use the same method to separate seeds from the husks. Basically two women use a blanket to throw the seeds into the air where the wind separates the seeds from the husks.
The dry blower which was developed in South Australia works on a similar principle.
Such machines were used in Western Australia with great success, owing to the very dry climate.
Dry Blowers have a screen over which the gravels were thrown, the fines, thyen passed through the screen and over a set of riffles in which the fine gold was caught.
This was the theory and it worked, except the old timers didn't count on nuggets falling off the screen onto the spoil heap together with the rest of the rubble.
Knowing these few facts anyone armed with a metal detector had a good chance of of success. The more research you do on the old gold fields and where the gold was coming from does of course help.
Every State in Australia has a mines department and each has a publications department where you can obtain literature and maps of the old gold fields for a fee.
While the main metal detecting boom was going on in the Golden Triangle as it is known in Victoria, I turned my attention to a little known field in South Australian called Teetulpa.
The Teetulpa Goldfield was found in 1866 by Thomas Brady. He obtained the gold by lying on his stomach and used a penknife to gouge out nuggets from the slates that ran across a gully that was later to become known as Brady's Gully.
For his find, the first major gold find in South Australia he was rewarded ?1000 and given twenty (12ft x 12ft) claims. Althought he biggest nugget found on the field was only twenty yards from his claims. It wqeighed 29 ounces and 15 pennyweight (dwt).
This was later purchased by the South Australian mines department who still have it tucked safely away somewhere.
When news of the finds reached Adelaide, people left work and heaqded for the field in hope of instant riches. Thanks to a reporter who worked for the Adelaide Advertiser and Recorder and was resident on the field at the time, the field prospered and grew.
At one stage, over 5,000 men were working on the field.
Not everyone was finding gold though. The finds that were made read like the mainifest of an Alladins cave, it was this that prompted me to make a number of visits to the area.
Using a post hole digger I was able to find the gravels in which the gold had been deposited. With the aid of a dry blower I was able to recover the fine gold and with the detector any nuggets that came off the screen into the spoil heap.
Teetulpa is 400Km from Adelaide so weekend trips turn out to be a costly affair. Living on the field even for a couple of weeks can prove to be quite profitable.
Don't go there expecting to find anywhere to buy anything. This is a ghost town with nothing but scrub and saltbush as far as the eye can see.
All provisions have to be taken in with you along with a plentiful supply of water.
One man will consume about one gallon of water a day without considering personal hygiene. There is no water to be had there unless you know anything about solar stills and can maintain them.
Water, or rather the lack of it and the big gold discoveries in Western Australia was the main cause for the field to close. During the evening after a days work, you could always cook up a rabbit or a couple of kangeroo steaks. Most Aussies carry some sort of weapon when they go bush otherwise they wouldn't survive out in the wilderness unless you had been trained by the aboriginals to catch your food live.
Damper is a kind of bread that made from flour and water and baked in a cast iron pot called a Dutch oven which is placed in the red hot coals of your camp fire.
A fire at night can be seen for a long distance on the goldfield and you can always tell if there are strangers on the field.
Aussies might to some be the strangest people in the world, but in the bush they are the most hospitable and friendliest people you could ever find. Needless to say it wasn't unusual for a couple of strange faces to turn up at your campfire with a couple of tinnies. (beer)
During the old days the miners would gather in knots (groups) around the campfire and discuss the days finds, nothing really changed its still the same even today to the modern prospector.
As a result of my activities I had palled up with a couple of other guys, Eddie McQuire and Brian Amos. During a drinking session at the Yunta Hotel I got to hearing about a place called Tibbooburra in NSW over 600Km away. We heard tales of one guy that had just got 6,000 dollars worth of nuggets, we took off on what was to be the start of chasing gold all the way around Australia.
Gold was first discovered at Mt.Poole and five months later Mt.Browne where 14 oz had been uncovered. Dry Blowers were the order of the day, a great deal of gold was lost owing to lack of crushing facilities and the cement like material covering the gold.
For this reason a great deal of gold still remains in the dry blowing heaps.
Eddied spread these heaps out over an area and proceeded to metal detect the area recovering about one ounce of gold per day u8sing this method.
Whilst in the areaq I met Stan Smyth another pomme who owned a citrus farm in Merebin, Victoria.
Stan had been detecting in a place known as Bendigo Diggings and had gone to Milparinka for supplies and also to weigh his gold. As a result of Stans finds which were 7:1/2 ounces, a rush to the area took place following an announcement on the radio of the find.
Stans area continued to produce good gold every day and he found one nugget weighing 10 ounces considered to be the largest ever recorded in the area.
Numerous finds came out of the race track at the back of the town; in fact Frank Pellin from Broiken Hill showed me several nice pieces. Almost everyone in the town which has a population of about 100 including the aboriginals, goes specking as it is called after rain.
Tiny pieces of gold, no bigger than a match head appear visable when the dust is washed off by the rain. Patiently they walk around in no set pattern gazing at the ground looking for that tell tale glint of gold.
Incidentally rain is a very rare commodity in these parts ad only happens once or twice a year. When it does happen you can bet on a downpour. The residents are very friedly and old Joss Davies Manageress of the Family Hotel will keep you entertained for hours with local gossip and who's finding what and where.
If you see a couple of coins laying on the ground in the hotel, don't try to pick them up. It's a huge joke up there, they have been cemented into the ground. You'd be surprised how many people fall for it and realise it's a huge joke when they try to pick them up. It always creates a humorous situation.
Tibbooburra has a nice camping ground with plenty of fresh water and wood supplied free to the campers courtesy of the local rangers. There is also a nice collection of mining relics on display, or was until it was vandalised by thoughtless drunken morons.
There are area's where the Garrett detectors produce best results but at Tibboburra owing to the red mineralised clay and neutral quartz, Whites and the D-Tex 15 khz detectors produce the best results, with one exception being the groundhog A2B, specially modified for Australian conditions.
Australia is one of the largest continents in the World and consists of eight states, all of which produce gold. It pays to know the seasons. It gets too hot to detect in some parts of Western Australia during December, hence a migration takes place between the professionals.
Although four wheel drive viechles are favoured, they are not really necessary as any conventional car can be used. Remember to stay put when it rains though or you will get bogged down to the axels and find yourself isolated for some time.
It is impossible for me to name all the goldfields in this article. Australia House in London, should be able to put you in touch with the various mines departments in each state where you should write for further advice.
You could of course contact Miers Den, Whitehorse Road, Mitchum, Victorian who may be able to help you. At the time of writing this article a 150oz nugget had just been unearthed in Western Australia. The largets nugget, the Welcome Stranger weighed over 2000 ounces and recently the Hand of Faith was sold to the Golden Nuggett Casino in LA, U.S.A. for one million dollars.
When I go back, I'll be looking for the body that lost its hand and also Lasseter's Reef.
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