Before you walk away from your site, I assume that you will bring in your placer testing equipment and determine how much gold per cubic yard is in it? I dont really see much gravel there. Looks to me to be decomposed bedrock with a little gravel near bedrock.
We may pan a bit out to test. We are not really going to process the dirt. We are looking for detectable nuggets in the gravel above the bedrock / cap. We found some when we detected the bottom of the trench. This was just a test cut to plan if any future excavation worthy.
Appreciate you getting back to me...that red color soil could have more nuggets in it but until you dig it up and lay it out flat enough to metal detect you'll never know. Alot of Australia is precambrian bedrock that has been lying in place, weathering out for billions of years. I guess you could always start out detecting a small area first and expand outwards, and when the money runs out, then move on. Problem with that is gold nuggets occur very irregularly, and the next one will just be out of reach to make it pay for the backhoe and operator. Good Luck!
I guess you could also metal detect the nuggets and figure out the spacing and the depth of them to determine whether or not its even worthwhile continuing the dig. Backhoes and operators aren't cheap especially in the bush.
My thought is that the geologic model of the nuggets there is gold weathering out of the decomposing bedrock rather than an ancient stream channel like you said in the video for what it's worth.
@waltertodd4479 we have found many ounces in that area just surface detecting. What you are telling us to do is exactly what we are doing. Did you watch the video all the way through. We found a nugget right at the end of the trench. We also found a nugget in the bottom of the trench. While the backhoe was there I got him to flatten a couple of piles we had pushed up earlier. Those activities more than paid for the machine hire. Hiring the machine was carefully calculated, we don’t like to spend money we can’t recoup. The machine is from a nearby lease, so we only hire for a couple of hours at a time.
Good one. Great idea too.
Deb has the ideas.🤣
Well done guys 👌
Cheers 👍
Nice one Deb. Finely tuned hearing it seems.
Thank Chrispy..Selective hearing. 🤣
Great result Paul
At least we have a plan now.😁
Well done thanks for the look
We learn together. 👍
Before you walk away from your site, I assume that you will bring in your placer testing equipment and determine how much gold per cubic yard is in it? I dont really see much gravel there. Looks to me to be decomposed bedrock with a little gravel near bedrock.
We may pan a bit out to test. We are not really going to process the dirt. We are looking for detectable nuggets in the gravel above the bedrock / cap. We found some when we detected the bottom of the trench. This was just a test cut to plan if any future excavation worthy.
Appreciate you getting back to me...that red color soil could have more nuggets in it but until you dig it up and lay it out flat enough to metal detect you'll never know. Alot of Australia is precambrian bedrock that has been lying in place, weathering out for billions of years. I guess you could always start out detecting a small area first and expand outwards, and when the money runs out, then move on. Problem with that is gold nuggets occur very irregularly, and the next one will just be out of reach to make it pay for the backhoe and operator. Good Luck!
I guess you could also metal detect the nuggets and figure out the spacing and the depth of them to determine whether or not its even worthwhile continuing the dig. Backhoes and operators aren't cheap especially in the bush.
My thought is that the geologic model of the nuggets there is gold weathering out of the decomposing bedrock rather than an ancient stream channel like you said in the video for what it's worth.
@waltertodd4479 we have found many ounces in that area just surface detecting. What you are telling us to do is exactly what we are doing. Did you watch the video all the way through. We found a nugget right at the end of the trench.
We also found a nugget in the bottom of the trench. While the backhoe was there I got him to flatten a couple of piles we had pushed up earlier. Those activities more than paid for the machine hire. Hiring the machine was carefully calculated, we don’t like to spend money we can’t recoup. The machine is from a nearby lease, so we only hire for a couple of hours at a time.
Aaaah, the last one was 57😢
🤣🤣