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Lammerlaws History - on the road to El Dorado - Part 1 - The Claim Years
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Lammerlaw
#81 Posted : Thursday, 29 December 2011 5:45:07 p.m.(UTC)
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A photo of an interesting stretch of stream - not because I got any great amount of gold here but because of the history of the spot. The photo was taken just upstream and around the corner from Mac's first Depression era camp of 1933 and just downstream from his second camp.

Alluvial workings can be seen on the spur above the junction of the creek with the main river.

This is also the site of...perhaps some stories are best left untold...except to say that it was in the spot where it can be seen the stream has been diverted that I actually experienced glimpses from the past.

The angular nugget with the quartz crystal came from the left hand side of where the photo was taken and the three pieces of quartz, the two smaller pieces with one piece of gold in each and the larger piece with three or four clearly visible pieces plus forty or so microscopic pieces all came from within the scope of the photo. Unfortunately these photos dont show the gold as they are not clear enough.

The quartz reef from where these specimens came had an absolutely fabulous write up in the newspapers of the time and from the hole where these specimens came a report stated 6 ounces to the ton.

The last photo was taken while standing on the spur where the workings are and looking back at the Landrover - this photo was taken early in the piece as the Landrover died of abuse and a series of dodgem car episodes including sliding down the track on its side after a snow fall made things slippery.

Behind the spur with the ground sluicing workings and on the other side of the main river behind the spur, to the right of the shadows can be seen the track that is visible in the first photo of the series of nine on page four. This track led to another gold reef, the site of a stamper and huts associated with the workings here.
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Lammerlaw
#82 Posted : Friday, 30 December 2011 8:53:31 p.m.(UTC)
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Mac and his mates decided to dam the stream and divert the river and thus they set about to do so - it took them a long time to built their dam and Mac stated in his letter that it was the most back breaking work he had ever undertaken.

The Dam was finished and photographs taken. This would have been at a point further up the valley past where their camp is shown in its second location.
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mineforgold.co.nz
#83 Posted : Saturday, 31 December 2011 4:36:45 p.m.(UTC)
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Hydraulics are a wonderful thing. The enthusiasm of the old timers is impressive.
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Lammerlaw
#84 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 10:04:35 a.m.(UTC)
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mineforgold.co.nz;8751 wrote:
Hydraulics are a wonderful thing. The enthusiasm of the old timers is impressive.


It is indeed amazing where the old timers worked, how much material they shifted...and sometimes reshifted.

Unfortunately I cannot find the photo at the moment but the last photo was taken on the evening of the day that it was finally completed.
After weeks of backbreaking work and the final completion of the Dam the fellows went back to their tents - that night a storm came up - and next morning the dam?

The very next day the dam effectively ceased to exist - washed away next day.

This shows the trials and tribulations which followed many of these parties of men who worked hard using nothing but manual labour - days and weeks of work destroyed in just a few hours.
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kiwijw
#85 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 10:21:18 a.m.(UTC)
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BUMMER !!!.....Same thing happened to the Oxenbridge crew when they spent months building a dam to divert the Shotover River after completeing there tunnel to take the water. Very next day after it was finished a flood washed it away. Poor buggers. What man does for gold.....

Happy new year. :)

JW :)
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Lammerlaw
#86 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 10:41:02 a.m.(UTC)
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kiwijw;8787 wrote:
BUMMER !!!.....Same thing happened to the Oxenbridge crew when they spent months building a dam to divert the Shotover River after completeing there tunnel to take the water. Very next day after it was finished a flood washed it away. Poor buggers. What man does for gold.....

Happy new year. :)

JW :)


Yes - I had forgotten about the Oxenbridge tunnel - my new Goldbug went swimming on Saturday but I didnt need it as I came across a crevice on my place and had my best weekend for ages - it was 'the' perfect end to 2011 and the perfect start to 2012.

Weather this morning has turned to custard so glad I am not up at my place today.

Happy New Year to you as well John.
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nzpoohbear40
#87 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 11:32:02 a.m.(UTC)
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man graham i would love to have a nugget the size of the one beside the $1 coin..lol
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Lammerlaw
#88 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 11:50:57 a.m.(UTC)
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nzpoohbear40;8791 wrote:
man graham i would love to have a nugget the size of the one beside the $1 coin..lol


Well you will have to get down here and look for yourself - in the last three trips out we have had a 6 grammer, a three grammer and this last weekend another 6 plus grammer plus several one grammers - however it was an exceptional weekend...for nowdays.
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kiwijw
#89 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 4:02:39 p.m.(UTC)
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G'day Graeme, WOW....nice finds....well done. Bugger about the detector. Is it ok?? If it got wet inside I hope you didnt turn it on to see how it was. Thats a sure way to kill it. Your best bet is to open it up & with a compressor blow gun, blow what water you can out of it & then get a hair drier or similar & from a bit of a distance away let the hair drier blow into it for a wee while to help dry it out. When you are sure it is dried out try turning it on & see how it has fared. Here is a link that may help from a chap that dunked his in the drink.
http://forums.whiteselec...877-I-KILLED-my-new-GMT

I am about to set sail for Auckland for my early flight down to QT tomorrow morning. Will be in touch.

Happy hunting.

Regards

John :)

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Lammerlaw
#90 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 5:14:44 p.m.(UTC)
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Hi John - I had LepreSean with me and he will come up with us next time I go - yes do get in touch when you are down and we shall take it from there. The Belgium fellow is supposed to get in touch when he arrives in Auckland about the 11th or 12th so I might get up to my place aobut the 14th.

I hope to head off again within the next few days but the weather today is a bit inclement.

The young fellow who fell into the drink with the detector got up pretty quickly and it didnt seem to have too much water in it - that was on Saturday. When I got back here last night I opened it up and no water came out but nonetheless I kept it open and put it in the warmth for half an hour then reassembled it and it seems to be going Ok so no problems.

I didnt get the gold with the detector as it turned out. I just noticed a little bit of new bedrock exposed and it all came from a bit of a crevice about fifteen foot in length parallel with the bank and which I suspect was once under the bank in the gold rush days and never worked as it was too rich for a crevice which had been previously worked.
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Lammerlaw
#91 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 6:58:47 p.m.(UTC)
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The last campsite of Mac and his mates took them to 'A ridge close to the hut of another miner' - this is a photo of that hut - it was made of cut blocks of turf and quite large.

This huts location can still be readily identified and is marked partially by the raised mound of earth in the shape of a rectangle which marked the position of the walls and partly by the ash and rubbish heap which was very extensive.

The number and variety of clay pipe bowls near it was nothing short of staggering - 6 different fancy ones, four different makers marks by one particular maker, three different from another maker, another three were maker marked by other makers and several unmarked ones of slightly different shapes.
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Lammerlaw
#92 Posted : Monday, 2 January 2012 11:17:59 p.m.(UTC)
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The last of the photos relevant to this thread of a historic nature is this one which shows Mac and his partners in one of their camps - its strange to think that these men all mined in the depression and look from the pages of time, in the form of the photographs but have all crossed the great divide and with few exceptions their stories are lost.
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Lammerlaw
#93 Posted : Friday, 6 January 2012 8:09:51 p.m.(UTC)
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Six photographs back I showed a photo of my old Landrover with my father and a friend getting ready for a day in the river...this next photo was taken at the same spot but much later and shows my old partner who had previously been my uncles partner - this fellows father was the manager of the Sandhills Gold Dredge at Skippers. He was born on his Grandfathers Gold claim - his grandfather was Aspinal of Aspinals Terrace and gold claim up the Shotover at Skippers.

It was a pleasure to be in the hills on days like this - a hot summers day.
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Lammerlaw
#94 Posted : Friday, 6 January 2012 8:20:20 p.m.(UTC)
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Not all days were as pleasurable as the last photo indicates - We went gold mining rain, hail, fine and snow. On several occasions we were caught in heavy for and snow whiteouts - on two occasions I was caught well away from the truck in thick fog and ended up a long way from where I was supposed to end up - in thick fog and heavy snow all tussocks look the same and the hills cannot be differentiated one from the others - they all appear the same - GPS is a new innovation and the best device to carry into the hills.
This photo was taken at the truck in heavy fog...the same spot as the preceding photograph.

I also managed to drive an earlier Landrover into a bog in heavy fog and next day when I went back to examine the place simply could not understand how I actually got through it and out the other side - providence I guess.
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mineforgold.co.nz
#95 Posted : Friday, 6 January 2012 9:07:08 p.m.(UTC)
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GPS is indeed a wonderful thing.
I remember stumbling through the bush at the end of a day tramp with night almost upon us. The choice was: stop and use the last few minutes of daylight to build some kind of shelter for the night, or keep going in the hope that we were only minutes from breaking out of the bush. A miserable night in the bush wasn't very appealing so we took the gamble and carried on. We could have spent a very uncomfortable night a hundred yards from the ute if we had stopped.
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Lammerlaw
#96 Posted : Friday, 6 January 2012 9:37:23 p.m.(UTC)
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mineforgold.co.nz;8974 wrote:
GPS is indeed a wonderful thing.
I remember stumbling through the bush at the end of a day tramp with night almost upon us. The choice was: stop and use the last few minutes of daylight to build some kind of shelter for the night, or keep going in the hope that we were only minutes from breaking out of the bush. A miserable night in the bush wasn't very appealing so we took the gamble and carried on. We could have spent a very uncomfortable night a hundred yards from the ute if we had stopped.



It sure isnt the most pleasant situation when you have to make those decisions - I have done it Wallaby hunting when I walked far further than I should have and when I turned around dark was nearly on me and in the snow and chill and lightly dressed ended up absolutely exhausted back at the hut about eleven at night...not one of those trips I want to repeat in a hurry!
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Lammerlaw
#97 Posted : Friday, 13 April 2012 8:28:15 p.m.(UTC)
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I have leftt his topic for some months but have decided to finish it...or do a bit more...a story is never best left half finished and no one has ever published a history of this gold field.

Leaving the small stream that has been dealt with in the last few contributions we head up the main stream - visible on the opposite bank is a water diversion race, more I feel to dry the creek bed than to channel water for ground sluicing as there was evidence that the bed of the stream here had been well worked. It was directly below when moving rocks underwater that a rock fell, pinned me under water and broke my leg...an agonizing 'walk' back to the truck parked on the cliff top as shown in earlier photos then a fifty mile drive to hospital. Within the view of this shot I found some great gold with nuggets up to 12 grammes and daresay there is more there yet.

This photo was taken halfway up the straight shown in image number two in posting 74.

This area was and still is so little frequented that just up the creek and around the bend we found a rock overhang with all of an old timers gear stashed there waiting for him to return...but I guess he never got back.

There are many names associated with this area but except for the research of a couple of fellows the area would have been totally forgotten and the names of those who lived and mined here a century and more ago would have been long lost and forgotten...hopefully one or both of the guys will write a book one day telling the story of this area.
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asterix
#98 Posted : Saturday, 14 April 2012 10:06:51 a.m.(UTC)
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What a great read this thread has been!! Good to see you carrying it forward Lammerlaw,"theres gold in them thar words"
Got the makings of a Barry Crump style book if you ever decide to hang up ya gear.Thanks
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Lammerlaw
#99 Posted : Saturday, 14 April 2012 8:10:33 p.m.(UTC)
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asterix;12207 wrote:
What a great read this thread has been!! Good to see you carrying it forward Lammerlaw,"theres gold in them thar words"
Got the makings of a Barry Crump style book if you ever decide to hang up ya gear.Thanks


The truth could have put Barry to shame but sadly due to the lack of a 'Statute of Limitations' in this slave state I cant put too much into the forum threads I have begun!

Thanks for the kind comment though - much appreciated.
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Lammerlaw
#100 Posted : Monday, 7 May 2012 4:39:18 p.m.(UTC)
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This photo shows a more rapid stretch of river only metres up from the last photo - In here I have found a good deal of gold and it has never been finished. Due to an impending change of circumstances in my relationship with the parties who manage this area now I may shortly display a map of where it has not been worked and where I know there is amazingly good gold...do unto others as they do unto you so to speak. The largest nugget from here was 12 grammes. and in total from a very small area quite a few ounces were taken.

The first photo shows an overview of the stream and careful searching will show yours truly.

The second photograph shows your truly with his engine and pump - and yes I often used to move it from one spot to another all on my own - how I did it I have no idea as I had great fun trying to move it on my own property last Christmas - come to think of it last Christmas turned to custard as far as this motor and pump are concerned but thats another story!

The third photograph was taken out where the gold lay and when this photo was taken I was right into it. To this day however the large boulders have not been moved and thus there should be great pickings - due to the relationship with the neighbours I have never divulged the spots unworked but the day does draw close...to those interested keep an open eye on this space!

In the second photo I got to the bottom to find a deep overhung crack which was going to be full of gold but alas it had been worked by the Chinese and the only thing I found deep under the overhang was a silver spoon! I guess the old timers were spooning out the gravel. The main stream to the right made up for it though with many ounces of heavy gold...and to this day largely unworked.

No it is no good for detectorists as it has well and truly had the hoover over all the bedrock visible and it has been thrashed with Minelabs and Goldbugs over the years - the first detectors here were in the early 1980s.
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