New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Yup up the Pohue. When I was there the track was almost non-existent and you just had to guess the correct direction, bush bash and keep an eye out for the odd old marker now and again. But the mine tailings contained a lot of large calcite specimens and minerals not normally found around the other mines in the area. From the high degree of mineralisation shown in the rocks I reckon it should be much better for gold then the Monowai.

I had left the camp a couple of years before it got flooded but remember doing some renovations on the old hall and seeing silt packed inside the walls for about a meter up from cyclone Bola's flood. The place was best to be closed it was just too vulnerable from flash floods.

One thing that is a shame with the camps closure is that Ernie the owner used to hold a rock hound convention there every year. Really interesting talking to everybody and I used to spend the year collecting carnelian and chalcedony pieces from the beach and exchange it for made up jewelry to keep the missus happy.

Edited by user Sunday, 2 June 2013 9:38:33 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Very well done Garry. Good on you mate. Good to see some sassy Coro gold.

Good luck out there

JW :)

great to see. nice effort. was beginning to wonder if all the gold was in the south island lol

Gidday folks.

Appreciate the comments. There is always a speck or two to be found somewhere, but it is hard work sometimes. Only ever use a pan and a sluicebox. Definitely not dredge country.

This is the total result for a day up Waitekauri last week.

Very nice mate, could be some nice gold waiting for you in the bottom of the crack!

Managed to make a quick mid-week trip back to the crack, convinced I'd never need to work again.
No Eldorado, but sucked out these few pieces.

.

When combined with the bits from last week, made a respectable showing for a Coromandel crack.



Here's spot X.

Some nice bits of Coro gold there Garry. Good to see your efforts are being rewarded. Well done. Your photo is a beautiful scene of up a typical Coro stream. We dont have that bush down here in Central Otago but that is a huge bonus for detecting. Went out for a few hours yesterday arvo with a new 17 x 11 Nugget Finder coil to go over some old ground I have flogged to death with my other coils & got 3 little bits for 1.26 grams. I was hoping to get some bigger bits at a bit of depth that my smaller coils werent getting down to. Guess the bigger bits have been found & that they dont exist deeper down where I am detecting. Getting hard to snag them now. They dont seem to grow back over night or even the next season. LOL :)
Just tallied up my finds since being down here since April of last year & was just over 9 ounces. 3 ounces of it, coming off the area were I was yeasterday, since I got my GPX 4500 in november. So the new technology csrtainly paying off from my old GP 3000. Would be interesting to see how the 5000 would go.

Good luck out there & hope that sassy Coro gold keeps coming your way.

JW :)

Thanks for the positive comments guys.
That would make a nice little far full JW.
It would be interesting to drop your coil on a 5000 to see if there would be any difference in the results.
It is good to be able to get out all through the year.

Well there has not been a lot of new posts recently. I went out on a couple of different days last month and got only a couple of bits of dust each time. At least you learn where not to go.
A couple of weeks ago I went up the creek to follow a significant channel that ran across the flow, but the bottom was deeper than my shovel is long, so gave that away.
Found a couple of those boil holes and got the sucker to work on those.



Not a lot to show at the end of the day, but better than the previous couple of trips.



Even without the gold, some of these Coromandel creeks are just nice places to be.

We all have those "Must go there one day" places.
Last Wednesday I decided I would go to one of mine. A little headwater stream that had a couple of productive mines in their day.

There were a few windfalls across the track.



No, problem. I climbed up to the ridge and two hours later I was there. A stinking hot sunny day with no wind. It had been logged a year or two ago. There was nothing but knee-high gorse, crumbly steep slopes and rotting timber. Progress was slow.

This is taken from the old mining road. The mines were up ahead somewhere, but there was an impassable washout just round the corner.



When I saw this I wondered how it was that those blokes down south got prosecuted for moving a few rocks from a pile of tailings and this 150 year old road can be totally destroyed and nothing happens. If there was a pile of old pippi shells here, it would be protected for eternity. The little stream is somewhere at the bottom of the slope.



There is no going up there. And they don't want mining because it might make the streams dirty!

This photo is of the main creek, taken from the same place as the one above.



It was quite a contrast. Managed to find enough gold to convince myself there is some there, but not enough to make me want to return.