Headed back to the same gully as last weekend on Saturday. Getting hard to find gold in there now & it wasn’t until the final hour & the very bottom end of the gully that I snagged 4 bits.
Good luck out there.
JW 
Hi guys. Went for a late afternoon quick detect on friday. Wasn’t really planning on the detect but went to visit a mate who ended up not being home. The location was about 2 k’s from the above gully & an area where I have found numerous rough reef gold specimens over the years but damned if I can locate the source. I have been trying for years now. I wasn’t actually feeling too confident in finding anything as the last few times at this spot I had got nothing more. I hadn’t tried the 15 x 10 X coil though & thought…what the hell, may as well give it a shot. Well bugger me, three little rough chippy bits. The three on the right in the below pic.
On Saturday I went for a hell of a walk up in the hills a bit more local to me in QT. I had snagged a few bits in here with the 10" X coil last time in here & now knowing how deadly the 15 x 10" coil is & quite a bit deeper on small gold I was liking my chances. But you never do know. An area where I got a few with the 10" I liked my chances but got nothing with the 15 x 10. 
Another spot in there where I did well back in my GP 3000 days but had got nothing more with any of my other detectors & coil combinations, I got two bits with the 15 x 10 coil. The tussock grass was crazy & made for difficult detecting. I have been spoilt in here in the past when the ground has been like a billiard table, but not this time. Areas of exposed schist bedrock were now covered in tussock. My best bit for the day came from a slope I had got nothing off before & I wasnt even sure how deep the ground was going to be. Turned out it wasn’t too deep to the rotten schist bedrock when I chased a signal.
Ye Ha
Four little bits for the day, on the left.
Sunday was off to another location & only because Mrs JW wanted to get up in the hills & go for an E bike ride. I was still getting over my walk from the day before & wasn’t too keen. But when she mentioned an area that I could drive right too I agreed. We packed up a bit of a picnic lunch & headed off. It was another area where I hadn’t got any gold since my GP 3000 days & was full of hot rocks. The Zed loves hot rocks so I also took along the GM 1000 & the Nox 800. I started off with the Zed & the 15 x 10 coil. Was getting sick & tired of digging bloody hot rocks, but they all just sounded so good. I was onto another dig & expecting each rock I pulled out to be the hot rock causing the signal. But each time the signal was still down there. I was getting down a wee bit & the pick was only just fitting between to larger rocks where the signal was coming from. I was on the top edge face of where the oldtimers had stopped sluicing into the gully.
That was the one & only piece. I tried the Gold Monster & was sure it would ping me some tiny bits but no. Nor the Nox 800. At least the VLF’s told me the hot rocks but I doubt they would have got the bit I found at the depth it was.
A total of 8 bits for not even two grams. The things we do & put ourselves through in chasing the bloody yellow metal. But I love it. 
Good luck out there
JW
Went for a scratch around one of the very popular public sites on the weekend and found a good spot no one had mined pulling out a decent sized picker almost straight away, so we decided to bring out the sluices , 40 buckets later after we had mined the area out pulled out over 5 grams for the weekend , including a few nice 0.2-0.3 gram chunkers, super stoked .
Awesome. 
JW
Took the wee sluice out today dug about 600mm deep and wide on a bit of an inside bend for about 2 hours got point 24 g. Pretty happy
Hi guys, This past weekend was a bit grim on the gold front. Saturday was just one small bit from the QT area. It was blowing 40 bastards & not too pleasant to be out there. At least it wasn’t raining or snowing.
Wasn’t too deep. About 4 inches & into the rotten schist bedrock
Sunday a friend & I headed out on a two hours drive from QT & then a bit of a hike up into the hills.
Only managed two bits out of the same dig hole. Had to rip out a briar rose bush & thought that the root may have been giving the signal, as this has happened to me numerous times. I don’t know why that is.
I put the briar rose bush back in for the photo
Total for the weekend
Coronet Peak from the job site I am working on building a house. This was taken on wednesday after that snowfall tuesday.
Good luck out there
JW
Just commenting on the rose hip root issue, perhaps the gold is inside the root, as the root has grown around the gold. But, you have probably checked this.
Here is another root that had me thinking I was onto a bit of gold. Even broke the swing arm on my Zed in the process. 
Was swinging the 15 x 14 inch X coil. This pic taken just before breaking the swing arm.
JW
Nice. Dredging I assume??? Welcome to the forum.
JW
No whipped up a high banker for winter and it done well! Car size boulders and a shovel. Watch this space.
Well done. I haven’t used my homemade highbanker for a while.
Made mine to be able to be used as a little 2" suction nozzle dredge as well.
Got to love those car sized boulders.
Good luck out there.
JW
Last Sundays finds for a quick afternoon detect in the QT area. Two came out of this one dig. I was pretty surprised at how small for the depth.
So I hacked away more & it turned out the signal was coming from slightly lower down from that crevice. The Gold Monster was now getting a faint hit on it but it appeared to be just coming from the solid smooth schist bedrock. I belted the pick into it & started opening up a bit of hole & created my own crevice. Out popped a small bit of gold.Good luck out there.
JW
I only use the Goldmonster now and have retired my Minelab Xtreme as it is too heavy for me to carry! In fact it hasnt been out of its case for ten years.
Hi Graeme, Did you use the bungee harness with the Xtreme & were you just using the standard 11" DD coil that it came with? There are smaller coils that fit it. 6", 8" round coils & then small ellipticals like the Coiltek 10x5, Nugget Finder 8x6, 12 x 7. It is surprising how the smaller coils are easier to use on the Minelab PI detectors. But the GM 1000 is a good little machine.
JW
Hi John - My son got a smaller brown colour coil for the Xtreme and used it all the time - I only tried it once but hated the noise it made so just more or less let him use it. He would have paid for it in a very short time and we had a fifty/fifty agreement but I didnt have the heart to take my share!
The case is still sitting in the hallway where he put it after the last time he used it ten or so years ago.
He had a quick battery change system as he discovered that the battery is a standard motorbike battery with a top glued on I think so he removed the top from the battery and could just more or less instantly clip on the newly charged battery which at the time cost 1/4 the price that Minelab were charging.
That sounds like the little 10x5 Coiltek coil. Was one of my favourites too.
Is this the one? Pinged a 5 gram piece here with this one.
This coil found me a lot of gold. Loved it.
I think that is it - I will open the case tomorrow and have a look and tell you.
