he was on the back of the quad when it rolled. hes ok just a small cut under the chin. a couple of days and he will be back up the hill sniffing out the gold for me.
back up the hill. well up the Britannia track. what I found out today was that instead of going up the hill on the track cross over the small creek and take the true left bank and there is another old road in the bush. bit of wind fall and slipping but quite easy to follow. I didnât go far as im still not that fit. and it was late in the day. the creek looks well worth a try with the box so ill wait till summer and give it a go.
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I hauled a suitcase dredge a fair way up the Britannia years back. Got sweet FA, What gold we did get was as fine as. But that was in the lower reaches. Did a bit of detecting up there, not a lot of basement, but did score a few wee clunkers.
I heard of a nugget picked up in the carpark by a blokes wife and her friend while she was waiting for him and his m8 to get back from their prospect. Empty handed I think. A fella camped up there, while back now, reckons he got stalked by a big eel in daylight, stuck itâs head in the pan, which caused him to walk on water with it following. He never went back all the time I knew him.
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I got permission of the farmer 3 or 4 years back to put my 4" in the creek on his property. worked for a couple of days got colour but small . 1/4 grams maybe for the whole time.
I did find an old mine drive yesterday up the main creek on the true left.
co ordinates NZTM E 1499975 N5382627
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asking round I have found out that the alluvial gold at the Britannia came out of stony creek . which is not named on the map but is the main one north of the Britannia mine. all gold in the area was below the 600m contour
Hi Keith could stony stream and stony stream
be one and the same.Make a safety pod for
black dog with dog belt
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ive also found out there was another stamper in the main creek on the true left quite a way up but before stony comes in. the old track then zig zags up the hill to the main mine
The Brittania Quartz mine produced a total of 11,000 ounces, rather than one main adit or shaft, the workings were comprised of a series of adits at various spots, with wire cable ways conveying the ore by bucket to the stamper. The quartz leads were narrow in nature consisting of a series of discontinuous quartz stringers. Per ton of quartz these stringers contained a high gold content. But of course an adit had to be of a reasonable width and height to allow mining. So a lot of worthless rock had to also be removed to extract the stringers. Bearing in mind that the Brittania mine is on the northern slopes and reasonably high altitude on the range which separates it from the Waimangaroa Valley. This shoot of gold bearing quartz stringers is obviously linked to the undiscovered source of the gold which occurs in the Waimangaroa River. Much of the Waimangaroa alluvial gold was coarse in nature and quartz impregnated, which indicates it hadnât traveled far from source. The very fact that the occurrence of the coarse, nuggety alluvial gold in the Waimangaroa is confined to a relatively short distance of the stream bed, indicates that the source of that gold is high up on the valley sides. Some distance above the confluence with Conns Creek, the gold turns from the coarse nuggety nature to, flattened well travelled alluvial gold. The source of that gold being somewhat higher up on the Denniston Plateau. And you know where eh Keith. Sadly the source of the Waimangaroa gold was never located, most likely due to the steep nature of the valley sides, and ridge erosion, which likely meant any quartz exposure was buried by over-burdern,
The area where the rich gold in the Waimangaroa terminates roughly corresponds with the series of adits in the Brittania Valley if a line is drawn in a southerly direction. So it is patiently obvious that the Brittania quartz stringers, continue through the ridge and also outcrop high above the Waimangaroa watershed, where natural erosion and weathering, plus tectonic uplift etc has been responsible for the Waimangaroa alluvial deposits. Yes Keith there was a stamper in the lower reaches of the Brittania stream and an associated shaft or adit. Records show it as being more or less, next to the creek. I was unable to locate any records of gold production from this venture and can only assume that it was exploratory in nature, much like the Beaconsfield Drive and Stamper battery in the Waimangaroa Valley. which failed to produce results. Possibly that is the Drive you found the other day. Were I young and fit, I would be looking at locating the various Britannia Adits, and working out the pathway the aerial cable ways took, to deliver the ore to the one and only stamper. Then detect along them hoping for a fine quartz gold bearing specimen, that may have fallen from an overloaded bucket or mishap. Indeed even an ore bucket or buckets that left the cable way and fell to the ground and was abandoned.Or if recovered, was all the quartz recovered too. I have always viewed aerial cable way pathways that transported gold bearing ore as an interesting mission with a detector. And the chance of finding a fine specimen, esp when the mine records showed the quartz lead was an extremely rich one. There are several small adits in the Merrijigs,Slab Hut, big River area at Reefton that the ore assayed at 114 ounces per ton. Trouble was they were about an inch and a half wide and discontinuous, and at an inch and a half wide you need a helluva lot of it to make a ton, so they were never a profit making mining venture, just an geological anomaly. The average grade of the Britannia mine was, as I recall around an ounce a ton, on average. But many higher grade stringers were located, and the average is just taken over the entire production of the mine.
Cheers Trev . ⌠.
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hi trevor
mind if I paste that lot into that booky thing im putting together of our district.
our good friend flag told me most of the above stuff. he seems to have been every where one mentions. there was abit of possum sign up there so I may have to put sum traps out.
No problems there Keith
What about using borox mix that in
what the fuck ??? borox for what?
hi kiwigold can you give me any imfo about this. found today up middleton at the end of the walk up by the bathhouse.
NZTM E1506423 N5389830
looks like a bridge but no access either side
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Ah was just a thought as was watching these guys on YouTube using borox to wash there gold as the gold seemed to mix with it personal I would use mercury
Do you mean boron? I hope not. Maybe you mean borax. Borax is used as a flux to seperate impurities from the ore when smelting it but it will not attract gold so you couldnât put it on a copper amalgam plate. You would use quick silver for that.
Well Keith I guess itâs the bridge from Nowhere to Nowhere. Pretty cool though. Everytime I see the dog I think he should have been named âMidnightâ
I know that these guys were using borax another way I would use chemical much easier
Quartz Reefs of the West Coast Mining District
New Zealand by JF Downey page 47/48 appendix 131.
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thanks for that imfo. a great book I will have to try and get a copy
its an interesting reef or should it be called lead, it ducks and dives all over the place. seems to be tied into the mokinui mines if you follow it through.
also on the back of the Britannia mine in the head of deep creek there is extensive alluvial workings . there is now a chainsaw cut track into the area from Denniston (have gps route if you need it) donât know who cut it maybe me.
the possum boys trapped a line from the road to Denniston from the top of the airstrip over the edge down into conns creek . there is a sample they got out of gold in sum rock found down there. I suppose one should follow the ribbon line to see where it was. its steep country so ill leave it for the younger ones , but can give you the location of the line as I crossed it the other day while walking in the area
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