tonight's top tip is all about identifying the different types of workings in the old gold fields
so we're out here at a place called old toms mine in the whipstick and we're going to show you what
the surfacing is what some of the reef working or the big mine workings were and some of the shallow
alluvial gullies which are all great spots to head if you've got a metal detector now the first thing
we do when we get out our map i'm going to show you on the map what the actual bit of surfacing
looks like so you can see in front of my pointer there that area there and the one behind it what
we call a surfaced area now a surfaced area is an area that has been strip mines now surfaced areas
do get fairly well hit with metal detectors but they are great spots because we know the ground
is shallow so what we'll do now we've shown you on the map what the surfaced area looks like
and we'll show you in real life this is the patch that we are actually looking at on the map we can
see how it's all the gullies are coming down all the gutters are coming down from the hillside and
the red clay that's showing is actually the beard rock in this area here the gold was so rich that
the old miners didn't bother to dig little holes they came through and literally took the whole
surface off and washed that to get the gold out of so surfacing that is one of the spots that you
see on the dugstone gold map and a great spot to go prospecting we've seen what a surface patch is
let's have a look at our next type of working we're looking for reef mines or the deep mines
where the gold was contained within the quartz rock this is what it looks like on the map and
we're going to show you an example of what it looks like on the ground if i look back here over
my shoulder i can see the big heap up the back there that is the discard pile from when they've
been extracting the quartz or white rock out to take away and crush it a battery now they're great
spots to look around because lots of pieces of gold were still in the quartz and got discarded
because it showed no colour when the old timers were viewing it and on top of that we can see here
we have a costume and a costume was dug when the old miners knew there was gold in the area
but they were looking for the actual source or the reef a long channel cut across a hillside usually
going east to west so that it would cut across any north south reefs that happen to be in the area
so the costing down here great spot again to look at the old timers may not have got onto the reef
but sometimes there'll be little pieces of gold that were discarded out of that or the roof they
found may not have been payable or had enough gold in it for the old-timers to be bothered working it
so that's reef and costine another fantastic spot to have a look for some nuggets
the last type of working that i'm going to show you is the old miners shallow alluvial workings
this depicted on the map here by this red area so this is lots of little potholes that are in
the ground and again fantastic spots to look for gold now let's have a look at them in real
life here and you can see here we have a number of heaps around little potholes dug all the way
through this gully these were the old alluvial workings that the old miners would dig through
the overburden to get to the wash dirt once they got down to the bottom of the hole where the wash
dirt was if they happen to throw a shovel full out onto the heap then they didn't concentrate on what
went on the heap they got back into their hole dug out all their wash dirt and processed that so they
could then go on and dig another hole in the hope of finding a big one these kind of places are good
because if the bottom of the hole ended up being the top of the heap most of the gold that got
thrown out was fairly close to the surface by going over it with a metal detector we pick up
those pieces that the old timers missed and we're getting plenty of gold still from the old workings
well hopefully tonight's top tip has given you some good ideas on what to look for and how to
locate these places both on a map and out in the field certainly all of the spots that we've
shown you today whilst we've been out here are top places to go get yourself a nugget