Most visitors driving through Moina today are on the way to Cradle Mountain. They would probably be surprised to know that the area, especially Bell Mount, was a bustling alluvial and hard rock mining field in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Continue readingPosts Tagged → gold nuggets
Cleaning gold nuggets
You’ve found some nuggets with your metal detector. You finally retrieve them from the ground. You can see they’re gold, but they don’t look very shiny! They’re covered in clay, mud, soil, perhaps with bits of quartz still sticking to them. Maybe it’s even covered in ironstone, the famed ‘black gold’! How do you go about cleaning gold nuggets to make them look as good and shiny as they can?
Continue readingNews and Merry Christmas!
Recent news: Radio interview, trip to the Golden Triangle (Victoria), upcoming PMAT field trip to Back Creek.
Continue readingThe Ring River Goldfield
The Rosebery – Zeehan – Dundas area is renowned mainly for its silver-lead, zinc and tin deposits. However, some decent finds of gold were also made. The main gold workings in this part of the west coast were in the Ring River area and Melba Flats. Both of these produced some sizeable nuggets in their day. The Ring River goldfield was home to one of Tasmania’s gold rushes, in 1891.
Continue readingThe Corinna Goldfields
Gold was known in the northwest of Tasmania since at least James (Philosopher) Smith’s discovery in the Forth Valley near the modern-day Lake Cethana dam. None of the workings were on a large scale. It wasn’t until Harry Middleton’s discovery in Corinna in 1879 that the gold rush to the Pieman kicked off. It would eventually lead to the largest gold nugget ever found in Tasmania. Much of the area is still accessible to gold fossickers today.
Continue readingGold detecting in Tasmania
Tasmania has an undeserved reputation as a nugget-poor location. In fact many nuggets over one ounce in size have been found historically in our goldfields.
Continue reading