Might be heading to lyell creek next weekend who has been there any info and thoughts on the place or anyone keen to hunt some yellow stuff gives a shout
Have walked 3kms of the river bed lots of interesting stuff in there all old time equipment sadly lots of junk in the river or around drove me a bit nuts with hits from the detector I have been told the whole thing has been heavily dredged back in the day
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Cheers mate got a monster so I’ll be getting abit frustrated by the sound of it was the campground good
Go up stream take the cemetery track drop in keep going some interesting black sand drop out zones
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There can be some good gold in Lyell but we have generally found you gotta dig a lot to get it, the combination of dredging back in the day and the hoards of modern day prospectors have just about cleaned the river out, however definitely still colour up there, last time we did manage to find 1 piece of gold with the detector (be it to about 7 or 8 chunks of lead and other crap), the fossicking area doesn’t actually go too far up and there is a private claim above that so can’t really go any further, but yeah definitely still gold, my advice is find somewhere with some surface promise and then just dig deep and hit that bottom bedrock. We found the best untouched gold was about 1/2 way in between the campsite and the upstream bridge, there is (as of last time we were there) a massive blockage of trees in the river creating a very difficult to pass waterfall at about that point, but just below that seemed to be the best for us. Have not been there much though so should stop rambling as I probably know very little compared to some other sites.
The campsite is a really solid easy going campsite, can be extremely busy in good weather thanks to the Old Ghost road trail, but its a pretty decent one.
Cheers
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Funny have walk it all the way and thought the same thing about that bend
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Just stopped in at lyell for a look around. Not much digging by camp. Went up to v the Alpine crusher but track not maintained and got lost. Croseus is worth a wander up to. Sand flies the nastiest i have come across on the coast - just relentless. Tent open for about 20 seconds and 30 of the buggers found there way in. A bit of quartz lying around so must be something there