Goldfields Reminiscences

Reminiscences of an older better world we used to live in.

Timeline mid 1980s.

I was busy dredging a well-known gold producing river in NE Victoria with my Keen 5 inch triple sluice dredge.
One day a a young Swedish guy in his early 20s roared into my campsite in his battered old Ford van, he told me he had just come down from the Crooked River.
When I asked him if he had any luck there he proceeded to show me a nice one ounce specimen that he said he had dredged there, apart from that he said he hadn't
found anything much else over there.
He asked me if I minded him trying his luck in the river near me, I said go for your life.
The poor guy only had a small 2-inch dredge and despite his best efforts he could not reach the bottom.
After a couple of days, he gave up and packed up his gear to leave.
He told me he was going to try his luck on a smaller upstream tributary creek.
A few days later he drove back into my camp with a big grin on his face, when I asked him how he had gone at the new spot he showed me a glass container with
about 5 ounces of nice nuggety alluvial gold which he had gotten there.
I could not believe it, nor could I believe it when he shook my hand to say goodbye as he told me he was heading to Queensland.
When I inquired about how he could leave such a rich gold spot after just finding it, he replied that he was not a money-oriented person and that the gold he had found
would keep him going for the next 6 months on his journey of self-discovery.

I have often thought about dredging that creek myself but never got around to it.
I still have a couple of smaller dredges in the shed gathering dust and one of these years I will say fuck the government and the greenies and everyone else who tries to restrict the freedoms of people.
I will spend a week or two over there to see what I can find, hopefully, I won't get caught as the place is pretty remote.
That's one of my to-do things on my prospecting bucket list.

Nice story, beats the hell out of the negativity in the other thread.

I would go for it personally having never been one to be herded like the masses into a good sign obeying worker drone.
You would think at some point that the Swedish guy would have come to his senses and returned to the place though….

Would be good to know the outcome Old Digger, but yes you should dredge the creek.

If someone is wondering why I did not go and dredge that rich creek straight away it is because I did not have a suitable dredge at that time.
The 5-inch Keen was a good river production dredge but it was far too big and cumbersome to use on smaller waterways and creeks.
For that type of work, you needed a two or three-inch dredge, which at the time I did not possess.
I don't think the Swedish guy ever came to work the creek as he appeared to be a new-age hippy type of guy with long hair, drug paraphernalia and not altogether fully
in charge of all his faculties.
And even if he had come back he wouldn't have been able to work much of the creek which is about 7 km in length and would take someone years to fully work out.
Also, to work these types of creeks you need to be there at the correct water level time, one time I was there during a dry season the creek had hardly any water
in it at all so was impossible to dredge, and another time I was there it was a raging torrent that would have swept my machine all the way down to the Murray River.

There is another rich creek I know in North East Victoria that has similar potential and was also hardly if ever touched by the gold dredgers during those times.
This creek produced nuggets up to a kilo during the gold rushes of the 1800s and is another one I wish to search before I kick the bucket.
How exciting would it be to dredge up a 30-ounce nugget?

I do believe that dredging (illegal as it may be) offers the small guy prospector in Vic or NSW the best chance of making some serious money out of gold hunting
if you do your research and target some of the more remote hard-to-access locations.
You can forget about finding any serious gold in publicly accessible land with a detector unless you are prepared to go to the Outback goldfield of WA or Nth QLD.
And as for waiting for a new Super Duper detector to set the goldfields alight again, I think a lot of us will die of old age before that ever happens again.
Detector technology seems to have reached its limits in terms of large deep gold detection due mainly I think to the effect of any more powerful detection technology
would have on the electronic & communication infrastructure, so it would probably never be approved for commercial production.

Anyhow that's just my 2 cents worth of take on the state of things gold-wise, hope I have not bored any of the more learned members on here too much.

Old Digger, really enjoyed reading about your dredging days as I dredged in far east Gippsland and other places using a 5" Keens on pontoons with 'hookah. Crystal clean water in the east, but freezing. Used a abalone divers suit, but still could only stay down for a couple of hours at a time. Never hit the big time, but knew others that did. Heard of two guys that lowered a dredge into a remote creek by helicopter. They walked out after a season leaving the dredge in there. Found that much gold that they could write the dredge off.

Hi Old Digger just curious but do you know of or what happed to RKC ? He used to post on finders long ago then had the dredging forum based in NZ but it’s all shut down now.
I’d love to have a chat but I don’t want to publish anything incriminating for the world to see.
You could register a membership here ?

Have you still got that place in Gippsland Reg ?

The block that had the open cut terrace deposit is gone. I eventually closed the mine although the gold was still good. My partner had a motor bike accident and sustained brain damage and I couldn't get anyone interested in the project. The remoteness put people off.
I still have a share in a 400 acre block that is all bush. Beautiful wild country with a permanent stream running through it. I love that area, but it is hard living there because of the distance to anywhere.

Why not join O/D ? Give us a story or two. Enjoyed your first one. Who knows you might kick start something.

REG WILSON wrote:The block that had the open cut terrace deposit is gone. I eventually closed the mine although the gold was still good. My partner had a motor bike accident and sustained brain damage and I couldn't get anyone interested in the project. The remoteness put people off.
I still have a share in a 400 acre block that is all bush. Beautiful wild country with a permanent stream running through it. I love that area, but it is hard living there because of the distance to anywhere.

That is unfortunate it didn’t work out with the mine those sorts of opportunities are just a distant dream these days.
Do you mind talking about how you discovered that terrace deposit? The characteristics of the gold there and maybe the grades good and bad days ? Should make for an interesting read if you don’t mind anyway but understand if you want to keep quiet.

People would no doubt be all over an opportunity to live and work in pristine country like that post covid.

Having recently sold my place in Melbourne I’m currently not sure where to from here now I’m free and have heaps of time maybe I’ll have a go at the local red tape and see if I can get some sort of lease approved or find out who is responsible for the Maldon state battery and get involved in the restoration.

Goodman wrote:Hi Old Digger just curious but do you know of or what happed to RKC ? He used to post on finders long ago then had the dredging forum based in NZ but it’s all shut down now.
I’d love to have a chat but I don’t want to publish anything incriminating for the world to see.
You could register a membership here ?

IMO it looks like he didn't want to give the evro-mental-nuts ammo....


Gold Dredging Forum:
https://golddredgingforum.proboards.com/

https://golddredgingforum.proboards.com/thread/2199/forum-news-feb-2019

Feb 13, 2019 at 6:47am
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Post by RKC on Feb 13, 2019 at 6:47am
G'day,

I'm commencing to close down the forum to active postings! From today no new members will be able to register, and already enrolled members will no longer be able to make any posts.

For the time being I might add posts myself to threads such as, the thread "Fears grow over mining ban" which is still evolving.( UPDATE: latest updates to the thread "Fears grow over mining ban" can be found at mobile.twitter.com/rkcinnz ).

Thanks to everyone who has contributed over the years.

Regards,
Rob (RKC)

Thanks for the offer to join the forum guys, thanks, but no thanks, as you lose the anonymity of being a guest (pest) poster when you join any forum and give out your email address.
And anything you write as a member could come back to bite you in the bum at a future time, as everything is monitored these days by the big brother powers that be.
On the subject of dredges, I see that there are a couple of old Keen ones for sale of 5 & 6 inches on Gumtree for between $3k and $6k.
Tell them they're dreaming at those prices, better to import new ones from the US than pay those types of exorbitant prices.
And for goodness sake stay away from those silly electric type dredges that are advertised online, they are nothing but pieces of junk that don't have the power to process the materials effectively. without clogging up all the time and driving you batshit crazy.
You want a gasoline-powered engine dredge, preferably with a Honda engine which will give you years of reliable service.

Well this fizzled out fast. Like the Londonderry hole.
I guess the QED and Larry’s hole is the new meaning of life.

The Kurinelli NT rush and the last man standing on the field Col Wessel.

During the rush plenty of leases were pegged and the field had as small floating population. The station owner had agreements with a few well-known operators that gave access and easy movement via the station tracks. Others were turned away miners right or not. Locked gates constant refusal of entry- written notice or not made some go undercover. The excuse for refusal was cattle mustering or movement of stock to the area you wanted to be.

Staying with Col on his lease gave a couple of us access to all areas except those closer to the homestead. He was a giving sort of bloke if he decided you were not a fool. You needed a bit of staying power he could smoke drink and yarn till sunup and then go detecting.
He had a bit of equipment including a fair-sized dry blower and a useful Mitsubishi grader that as it got older burnt more oil than diesel. On occasions someone would stump up with 3 or 4 hundred liters of diesel and some interesting ground he had identified would be pushed.
As time marched on rehabilitation plans were required and this pissed him off. Not only the work involved for a one man show but the endless paperwork. He said to me one time ‘’ they want to drop off a thousand ’seedlings for me to plant on that hill I cut over there! how am I supposed to do that”. When he got hold of a 4500 the plan changed a bit. With permits and permissions, he would grade a large fire break around a selected area and control burn the spinifex. He did well on a couple of blocks.
One trip I was by myself, he took me out and showed me a recently detected block that he had given a good workout. It was lovely ground dominated by a little quartz and iron stone outcrop with a snappy gum on top. I worked it solid for 2 days with my new 5000 and various coils and did very nicely. I looked up late the second afternoon hearing a plane and it was our friend from Eppenara returning from Amaroo Station. A circle and a wing wiggle told me something was up, I packed and got going up as dark clouds rolled in. That night there was near record rain and the country flooded. I could have been stuck for a fortnight.

Ironically as I post this the whole Barkley region is under severe weather warning with most roads cut. PS Col passed away some years ago.