Over the year’s I have tried to save a small sample of Au from all the different locations that I have prospected. I principally consider the Otago Goldfields my prospecting home ground so most of my samples are from here.
I hope you enjoy seeing the different gold from around otago and I will try narrow locations down but not to give the game away.
Included along side the sample shown will be a brief description of the occurrence of the sample. Please everyone feel free to comment add to and or correct me as I am just a layman😉
This lovely gold was found on a private claim on greywacke/argillite basement rocks of a major fault zone that has uplifted miocene, 20 million year old, fine gold bearing fresh water quartz gravels, recycling the gold into the base of modern river sedements.
The Au showing possible nugget genesis by soil ground water processes.
Au was found by panning, blind stabbing(digging in the water by feel) for hot spot areas alongside a 4in dredge. Largest piece would be 3mm. Notice the bit with red staining.
My go to web site for a refresh is Otago university geology, gold.
“As old gravel deposits were uplifted by rising mountains, they were eroded and their gold was reworked through soil into streams and into younger gravel deposits. During this reworking, some gold is dissolved in water and transported short distances (metres) to be deposited on other gold particles. This results in a smaller number of larger particles in younger gravels, and some small nuggets have formed in this way. These younger gravels were easier to mine profitably, and some are still being worked in small operations in Central Otago.”
Winter is a good time of year to cut your hands panning on the ice obtaining some of the finest, purest Otago alluvial gold(except for the middle reaches of Deep stream). Found along the entirety of the shoreline of the famous Blue Lake, existing as a veritable halo of gold within an compacted inch thich layer of yellow mud and quartz pebbles in the swash zone.
I had a bottle like that which l got from St Bathans when l was staying at Cambrians for a few weeks back about 1972. Recently it fell and the bottle broke and the gold, maybe a couple of pennyweight is now scattered in the carpet.
My first 100 or so microspherules went the same way.
Some very fine Waipori gold fell on my parents hearth and half went down between the stones and wooden surround.
Always meant to get back to St Bathans. Havent made it yet.
Hi Sean, yep, I can vouch for that. The finest gold I have ever found.
Hello Mr Lammerlaw, That’s what you get for stashing gold in GLASS receptacles. They don’t go kindly dropping on to a hard surface. Ends in tears & curses.
Doesnt worry me John - Gold comes and gold goes - just like us and when I am dead and gone it aint gonna matter.
I used to mine gold in the gutter outside mum and dads back in the bad old days - right in the middle of Mosgiel - it used to fall out of sluice boxes from the dredge when I took them home to have my clean up. Back in those days it was ‘insignificant’ but maybe those days are gone. I remember getting my gearbox in the Landrover rebuilt and never screwed the floor boards back in. One day I came from Deep stream with the sluice box resting up against the seat. Took it out at my parents place and continued on to Waimate. A couple of weeks later in Waimate I happened to see in the dirt on the Landrover floor some gold! I scraped up all the dirt and gravel and panned it and then put the gold equally into 6 little bottles and gave them to kids. One of those ‘kids’, now around fifty five showed me one of the bottles which I had given her. Fully two pennyweights - 3 grams. I might conclude from that that I had lost well over 12 pennyweight or well over half a Troy ounce as each bottle was the same and quite a bit must have fallen out from under the floor boards.
It didnt matter then and doesnt matter now - nice day, nice places - nice people - and the memories, thats all that matters really…
An old timer from Naseby, Ian Fogo, was a broad accented Scotsman, he used to work on the last hydraulic slucing claim up the hogburn called George’s claim. After a day’s mining I would show him my wash up and listen to his tails, he said I was getting a very good grade for what I was doing, and always said “aye thats a good wash up”, in his thick accent. Really motivated me. I got quite ill as a 15 year old…drank too much of his home made whisky one hogmany.
He would tell of Mt buster and the kyeburn of place names on no modern map, one he kept mentioning was Vinegar hill. Well I finally found a sample there, in soil, quite on the surface where rain has washed or sheep have rubbed.
