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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2009 10:11:54 GMT 12
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2009 10:20:12 GMT 12
Pic 1 is punt that had 2 liter toyota motor that powered jet unit, jet nozzle was on camlock we could change to a 4 into 1 to power the dredge.
Pic 2 is boxes modelled after promac 8"
Pic 3 is working at the southern end of rich patch
pic4 20 oz came from behind the outcrop going into the river behind me
Pic 5 is the buttress that still covers what we reckon from what came out still covers a good 600oz. gone forever.
More pics to come. We managed to get a digger to shift the main current over to another channel (you can see calm water bottom left). Took 3 attempts tho.
More to come
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Post by roscoe on Apr 21, 2009 11:32:03 GMT 12
Now I`ve seen everything---a dredge abseiling down a cliff ;D
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 21, 2009 15:34:11 GMT 12
Here is the story direct from one who was at the Jewellers Shop and held 1kg ingots from 20 hours dredging. Its a long tale and it goes something like this;
Chapter One;
I had been suction dredging for over 15 years and just about had enough of climbing in and out of drysuits and wetsuits, freezing mornings on the Clutha when ice formed around the edges, boiling water to thaw out the boxes, making all sorts of excuses for not getting in the water, you know, its too wet- too windy-too hot-too cold-too dirty etc etc, which meant the enjoyment had gone out of hours underwater talking to oneself.
Sitting at home during the middle of winter and not dredged for a month or so, the phone rings from Phil in Cromwell, get your backside up here smart he says, the Clutha is as low as its been for years. Okay so much for retirement. Arrive in Cromwell with my trusty 6" homemade triple and sure enough the usual 8-10 knot river flow had dropped off big time.
We wander up and down the riverbank at Lowburn a few miles upstream of Cromwell, looking for the low pressure areas where gold would concentrate. We were aware a dredger was drowned here around 1980.
We find a nice rock outcrop poking out several metres into the river but fast flowing, I poke my head into the water and cannot believe what I see. With each ebb and flow or pulsing of the river current, the gravels are rolling back and forth, and under the gravels, black sands, and under the black sand, YELLOW. Wow.
Out with the hand held sucker, Phill holding onto me as I am in the river upside down up to me knees, and pull back once on the sucker.
17 pennyweight in one suck and its mostly flat slugs the size of your small fingernail.
The river is still too fast to dredge so we make up an anchor and Phill drags this out into the river about 50 metres upstream from where we run ropes downstream to the dredge and to tie the nozzle to. Another line goes ashore to pull ourselves out in to the river where more wash lies. There were hooks and loops everywhere to hold us in place but it worked. You dare not turn your head sideways in the current as either you lose your face mask or water enters the mouthpiece exhaust and then a panic to suck air or shoot to the surface.
The first day of actually dredging was unbelievable.
Stay tuned for the next chapter.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2009 9:43:06 GMT 12
Where are the pictures   Show us the pictures LOL  |
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Post by RKC on Apr 22, 2009 12:38:14 GMT 12
G'day GoldKiwi,
Thanks for posting! If I remember correctly you were the person who first told me the story of the 600 ounce patch. Anyway ... looking forward to chapter 2.
Regards,
Rob (RKC)
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 22, 2009 13:27:14 GMT 12
Patience Homesouth. When I figure out how to post photos will do so.
Rob, how do I go about posting photos.
Chapter Two;
After two days of setting up anchors, ropes and getting the hose/dredge to sit in the current without pulling the front of the dredge under water, we start to suck directly where I got the 17 dwt which is just five feet deep.
From an area about the size of a kitchen table we dredged up 26 ounces in about two hours flat, fighting the current all the time. It was a luvly sight sucking up the gravel and copius amounts of black sand and maoris leaving just a carpet of gold on the bottom. Unfortunately no camera at this point of time although it would be a struggle to take photos.
We cleaned the boxes out straight away just in case, and back into the water immediately as we had uncovered a perfect crevice loaded with gold.
This crevice was one foot deep, six inches wide, in eight feet of water, and went from the bank out into the river as far as we could see. Boy, were we grinning, with three of us having turns on the nozzle looking at gold piled thick in the front edge of the crevice. All the gold went up the hose as it was not possible to use the wee sucker and hold on to the ropes. It took three to work the current and at the end of the first day we are totally wasted.
From the crevice that first day we sucked up about 18 ounces of flat sluggy gold for a total of 44 ounces for one day.
The beers sure tasted good that night.
That was to be our best day by far and better than all the years I had been dredging. Over the next two weeks we struggled in the current to clean out the crevice and finally had to give up after losing our face masks and mouth pieces not to mention losing our grip to end up bowled 100m downstream.
However we recovered over 50 ounces from that crevice with the gold dropping off as we moved further out towards the middle of the river and I think the last day was for 2 ounces.
There was also plenty of gravel wash approx two feet thick with good gold on the bottom but the current beat us in this area. I cannot remember what we dredged off the bottom there, but think it was about 15 ounces close to the river bank, or approx 90 ounces total from a very small area.
At a later date Phill and I bought in a dozer to divert the river in this area but the river had risen enough to make this a failed attempt. On the third try Phill and Mark succeded to push the river across the other side to slow the current enough to clean up the bottom. I think also RFC got in on the act with a flash new Keene 8" and ended up with 50 odd ounces.
This was just the beginning to some fabulous months of dredging during the middle of a Central Otago winter.
More tomorrow and hopefully some photos.
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 26, 2009 16:31:00 GMT 12
Chapta three;
What a fabulous two weeks of dredging to date on virgin ground that many do not believe when explaining how gold was piled up in the crevice. You can begin to understand what the first miners recovered at the rich mining fields like the Arrow, Clutha and Gabriels Gully. Imagine panning pounds of gold in one pan.
All miners should know that the rich patches dont last for long but I had a gut feeling that there was more here yet although we could not beat the current in this patch and had the best of it..
Normally when checking out a new area in a river I float down the river looking for the likely hot spots but had not yet done that at the Jewellers shop as we were fortunate to drop onto a prime spot straight off.
So we jump in the river several miles upstream and float down, panning any where that looks good. After several hours of nothing promising we are back at our gold bank and whamo the gravel river wash changes to large boulders in amidst a brown wash about two feet deep, with slabby rocks and black sand showing in 15-20 feet of water and not too swift to work. There is an area over a half mile long by 8-10 metres from the river bank so here's hoping the gold is there.
By the end of the day the dredge is in position at the downstream point and we cant wait to get started the next morning.
Just Phill and I dredging now and right off we see gold on the hard clay bottom. There are cracks in the clay and I scratch out these cracks making little piles of gold. Its much easier dredging without ropes and lines everywhere but we still need to stay alert in about 4 knots of current. The gold is all through the brown wash but most is on the bottom which is sloping up towards the river bank and makes the moving of the big boulders quite easy just sliding them downhill. Behind one boulder there was a luvly tail of fine gold stretching downstream for about 10 metres.
Having turns about on the nozzle or as rockman we soon develop a system and the two feet of wash dissappears up the 6" hose reasonably quick only stopping occasionally to perv at a pile of gold behind a boulder or stacked up in a crack.
Our first 5 days or 20 hours of dredging returned 1.05 kg of melted gold plus a few ounces of the larger pieces. Our best week was 53 ounces and most weeks over 30 ounces.
Time flew past and weeks stretched into months with the same consistant results.
During this time Cromwell was covered in a hoar frost for five weeks, no sun, no wind, low fog and power lines thick as your arm covered in ice. Minus temps all day where it was warmer in the water (4-5 deg). We didnt care, we had lots of gold.
The boxes were cleaned up at the end of each week unless there was too much showing, and the concentrate sealed in a plastic bag untill we were ready to stream down when time allowed. There were bags of concentrate under the beds, in the cupboards, under the bench, I lost count of how many bags.
We thought we had it made for at least a year or two, lots of wash in front of us and spoilt to the point where we become too complacent instead of going full tilt and using all the daylight hours available. I would go home to Dunedin for the weekend to be with my children so each weekend we lost 15 ounces of dredging time. How dumb of us.
All this time the river remained very low but along came the first big rain which turned the river into a raging brown force and one month of no dredging.
L&M had a Keene 8" triple dredge for sale so we purchased that and also an underwater movie camera. The dredge had no pumps or motors but this was not an issue as I was making P350 pumps. The 8" wasnt ready for some time unfortunately as this would have doubled the ounces each week and there was more than enough ground in front of us.
From here everything turned to custard.
Stay tuned.
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 27, 2009 17:29:10 GMT 12
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 27, 2009 18:29:37 GMT 12
Yep that worked. Thanks for that Rob. Amazing thing technology when you have no idea how it works. I hope you enjoy these photos as it certainly was the good times and brings back the memories. This photo shows the rock outcrop where I ducked my head in and sucked up 17 dwt. That beauty crevice started under the gravel and headed out towards the middle.  Here you get an idea of the size of the river. We try to work the gravels in the current. You can just see a line heading from the shore and up river to our anchor upstream. We had loops in this line to clip the dredge line onto. It was a good system.  That's Phill with a huge grin on our first day and my home built dredge that was the best ever to save fine gold.  One side of the triple showing half of an average week, of about 30 ounces.  17 oz in a day and a half.  And in bar form.  A poor week? another 17 oz  Our first week on that beautifull brown wash. 1.05 kg in the retort plus several ounces of sluggy gold. We managed to fill the retort to the top a number of times.  From the retort melted.  Our best week on the brown wash. 53 ounces  The same 53 ounces in bars. ;D  We forgot to take photos at times as it was pretty much the same thing. We bought an underwater movie camera after most of these photos were taken and its a shame we didnt have it for the best of the Jewellers shop. |
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Post by manaia on Apr 27, 2009 21:21:51 GMT 12
love the pics , they make me want to splash out on a dredge .The only problem is i live in victoria and a bit scared of the consequences .
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Post by powderburns on Apr 28, 2009 4:42:53 GMT 12
Awesome story. That’s the clutha tamed by winter? Looks like it’d swallow you like a gigantic suction nozzle. Wonder what else is flooded beneath the dams, and Contact’s new dams…
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Post by roscoe on Apr 28, 2009 10:58:16 GMT 12
Keep it going, GK. Every dredger should have a day where the Gold Gods shine on him.
I noticed minimum black sands in the box. Did you find BS concentrated where the gold was deposited, or was it spread right across the river?
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 28, 2009 13:20:39 GMT 12
HI Roscoe, there's lots of black sand in the Clutha to the point of being a **** nuisance. However its also a good tell tale sign when you see tails of BS behind a low pressure zone, normally the gold has concentrated in the same place. The BS is both fine and coarse then the 'maoris', larger brown to black magnetite of all sizes and usually associated with lots of coarse gold.
The dredge is a wee honey with just the right fall in the boxes to keep the BS moving but not lose fine gold but dont forget we have let the water run for a few minutes to clear some of the BS for a show-off photo.
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Post by goldkiwi on Apr 28, 2009 18:29:24 GMT 12
The continuing story.
Chapta four;
Two weeks of dredging after the high river, a Ministry of Works gaffa hails us from the river bank and asks us about the clay base. Out of sight under the water a section of the clay was sliding on top of itself.
In preperation for the new Clyde dam lake height, a new higher road was built a year or so before. The road was built on a greasy back (clay basement) that decided to slide towards the river exactly where our brown wash lay. We didnt think too much about it at the time thinking they would probably repair the road which had two serious cracks and had slumped 2-3 inches.
The Keene 8" triple was finished with new motors, pumps plus a twin cylinder Gast compressor good for 100 psi and two divers working hard. The 6" keeps working while I potter around setting up the 8" and make a few mods over the next week. Finally we have two dredges working side by side thinking we are smart fella's dredging up all this gold, counting the kilo's of gold we are going to get. One full week was all we had with two dredges operating and then..............
Monday morning two weeks after the high river, we stroll down to the dredge looking forward to another 30 ounce week per dredge only to see trucks, diggers and machinery parked beside the river. After much discussion and whinging we find out the Ministry of Works are to build a huge buttress along the river bank out into the river, exactly with-in the metre of where our beloved brown wash sat patiently waiting to be dredged up by us.
To stop the road sliding into the river, the idea was to place thousands of tons of rock on top of the clay and halt the movement. The buttress would be half a mile long and 60 feet deep totally covering 100% of our dream. #^*/=@;(
Nothing we can do about this so we go hard out for the next 3 days untill they start dumping rock into the river turning the water dirty brown and we cannot see a thing. Thats it we are stumped. We sit there for a day watching for clear water but it's wishfull thinking so how can we get some dredging time in.
Ahh but we are clever resourcefull guys and we have a plan.
Night dredging is the answer. The MOW stop work at 4.00 pm so we will start dredging at 5.00pm and work to midnight or whatever to get in 6-8 hours and still suck up heaps of gold.
An 'A' frame is mounted on the front of the 8" as the 8" will suck up more material. Two 1000 watt flood lights are secured way out in front of the dredge and powered by a generator on shore with the power cable mounted high above the water.
Everything is in position and the sun slides down behind the hills. Crank up the genset, lots of light everywhere, beauty.
Now who goes first as niether Phill or I are really jumping at the bit to get in, Phill draws the short straw and tentativelly slides into the river. After about what seems like ages gravel finally rattles up the power jet and down the boxes. Great we are on our way, for about ten minutes anyway.
Phill comes rocketing out of the water.
"There's a bloody great eel down there, stuff this".
Whimp.
"You bloody well do it then".
Hmmph, okay.
On with the weight belts, air line and in to the water. Oh jeezus this is freaky. 15' of water, the flood lighting bounces off the sediment in the water and fractures the light making it not so clear. The lighting only lights up a circle immediately below the lights and nothing is visible outside that circle. Im looking around for this eel which is after all only an eel. Grab hold of the suction nozzle and push it into the brown wash. There is no colour at night and cannot see any gold or distinguish between gold or clay.
Head down sucking feaverishly trying not to think about thingys in the water, something tugs at my mouthpiece and I lose my mouthpiece, panic back to the shore. A rope had somehow wrapped around my mouthpiece in the current ripping it from me.
The rope is there for safety but was not visible in the dark water.
Okay sort that out and back in. Only minutes back sucking, head down, something punches me on the head, I look up, a friggin huge eel wants to eat my head. There is a whole family of eels watching. Panic mode to the surface.
"Stuff this Phill"
Whimp.
That's it for night diving we tell ourselves, too dangerous with ropes and what have you.
Yeh we left behind a small fortune because of some **** eels.
More to follow.
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Show us the pictures LOL 
