Hey everyone
Looking at doing a trip with my older mum to murchison in the next week or so and am wondering if anyone may let me on a claim with easy access i have a small sluse and a couple pans, I’ve tryed the public fossicking areas but they eather have been worked right over or to hard to access for her and id like to show her what its all about as she loves to watch shows like gold rush etc lol so if anyone know of a place like this or could give us a days acess to a claim it would be much appreciated, Thanks Daniel
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The public fossicking sites are returning as much gold as they do on Gold Rush. Its just a matter of scale.
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Having massive diggers, trucks & trommels helps a lot there though. That might be frowned upon in a public area where the same rocks have been turned over a million times already.
I recall a while back a tourist couple doing the Kiwi Experience Bus trip down the West Coast. They got to Ross & got it in their heads they would like to stay there & pan gold for an engagement ring as a memento of their NZ adventure & a cool keep sake having the ring made from gold they panned. The plan was to catch up with the bus on its return. Which they did. They did get enough gold to make a ring but the physical effort broke them. But they succeeded. I did a search for that story but couldn’t find it.
I personally don’t like your chances with just a pan. You will at least need to use a sluice box. It comes down to moving & processing as much ground as you can in a given time. The old numbers game thing. The more you process the greater your chances. The water through a sluice box does a lot of the work for you sorting any gold from the gravels. The tricky thing is that the gold needs to be there in the first place & the Arrow gets thrashed. More so that you are going there just after our Xmas holiday period. We need a good flood to bring down more “flood” gold, which we haven’t had for a long time.
I wish you luck.
JW 
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