As some of you may have realised I have an interest in looking for gold! There are two main ways you can search for gold, with a metal detector, and by panning. The former can find you some large nuggets but more often than not you will find nothing, the latter will find you gold just about every time you go out to but they will be mostly tiny pieces.
Yesterday I took a trip to a new location for panning about an hour to the west of Melbourne that I've only visited once previously and here is the 'haul' of gold I recovered after about 6 hours of hard digging, sifting, and panning;
95 pieces of panned gold
The location I was panning was on the inside bend of a river on an embankment of gravel that sat on top of a 'bedrock' that was sort of a cross between clay and slate. I was clearing away most of the gravel from the 'bedrock' and then only panning the last few centimetres and scraping the clay clean. The heavy gold under the action of the river in flood will move to the bottom and generally be found just right on the bottom. Smaller pieces will show higher up and give away the presence of the gold underneath. This is the very same mechanism that allows you to find the gold with a pan; shake all the gravel and the more dense gold sinks to the bottom of the pan and the lighter material at the top can be washed away. This gold is what is left at the very bottom of the pan when everything else has been washed away. It helps to pass the material through a sieve before panning as this will help to separate the mud and clay particles that will stop the gold from sinking
Here is the hole I was working and you can see the cleaned up clay;
The hole that produced the gold showing the clean clay bottom
I worked the hole in each direction but eventually there were diminishing returns. The area has been extensively worked back in the gold rush days so I was just finding a small pocket left behind by the original miners.
One thing I did find down quite deep near the bottom of the hole was a yabbie! I couldn't believe how deep down this little guy had dug himself, probably 40cm in ground filled with chunky rocks! I didn't snap a photo of him sorry.
All in all a nice day in the outdoors getting some exercise.
A peaceful location in the bush to get a bit of exercise digging holes. The river is all but dried up with only a few puddles remaining