"Fossicking" means going over old workings, turning up boulders, and taking the clay from beneath them, exploring fissures in the rock, and scraping out the stuff with your table knife, using your pick to help matters, Pulling up of trees, and clearing all soil from the roots, scraping the bottoms of deserted holes, and generally keeping your eye about for little bits of ground left between workings by earlier miners who were in too great a hurry looking after the big fish to attend much to small fry. All it requires is a little perseverance and " nous." The easiest and simplest of all methods is "fossicking." An old diggings is the place for this work, because there you will lean the kind of country, formation, and spots to look for gold when you want to break new ground. Well, remember this, that, with the exception of iron, no metal is more widely distributed, and that in nearly every creek gold will be found, it not in one spot in another. These, with a piece of wallaby and a billy of tea, are a sweet meal enough after a hard day's work. When nearly done stand it against a slide in front of the lire, and let it finish baking while you cook the other two. Cook it slowly over the fire, taking care it does not burn, and tossing it over again and again. Dust a little four into your frying-pan and put the cake in. Divide it into three parts and flatten out into cakes about half an inch thick. A Johnnycake is made thus: Put a couple of handfuls of flour into your dish, with a good pinch of salt and baking soda,' Add water till it works to a stiff paste. It is also useful to make your damper or "Johnnycake," in which serves you in place of yeast bread. This will be further illustrated later on. That is to say, to wash the soil in which you think there is gold. Now, most of the tools above described speak for themselves, but the use of the tin dish require explanation. A gun in the day time and a noose at night will provide you with flesh food, and you must trust to luck to come across some place where you can get a bit of salt or fresh meat occasionally. flour, tea, sugar, salt, soup, and baking soda. If you can afford a horse (and you can pick up one for a pound or two nowadays), so much the better, us then you can carry a small six by eight tent and plenty of tucker, i.e. in diameter), a saw, hammer headed tomahawk, some nails, a couple of black-handled dinner knives, a pick and shovel, a compass, and as much tucker as you can carry.
#SLUICE BOX RIFFLE ANGLE SKIN#
This should consist of two pairs of blankets, two course flannel shirts, two Crimean shirts, half-a-dozen pairs of socks, a couple of towels, and a pair of mole skin trousers, a billy and pannikin, a frying pan, a bucket, a tin dish (this dish has sloping slides, a rim at the edge, and is about 2ft. In the first place, if you intend seriously to prospect, you can't put up at hotels. Very well, then I will endeavour to explain the why gold is sought for and dug as we did it in the old days. You have never been further away from the city than Brighton Beach. You want to go digging, and you are ignorant even of the A B C of it.
#SLUICE BOX RIFFLE ANGLE FREE#
Ah! if these hardy old fellows with all their practical knowledge and experience bud but taught their sons the tricks of their trade what a different story there would have been to tell to-day ! The great bush with its free air, healthy life, and independent existence was not good enough for the descendants of the pioneer diggers factory life in town working for wages they hankered after and they got it. The Working Men's College doesn't teach digging, and the race of old alluvial gold miners is nearly if not quite, extinct.
There is no "gold chair" at the University. Gold-digging, the greatest and most profitable trade, that has yielded 325 million in 40 years in Australia, there is no one to instruct them.
But if they want to learn practical alluvial Do they wish to study agriculture there are two colleges.
#SLUICE BOX RIFFLE ANGLE HOW TO#
But they don't know how to go about it, being perfectly ignorant of everything connected with digging, If they want to learn to be carpenters or bricklayers or plumbers there are plenty of teachers. There are many men walking about the city of Melbourne who read of gold being got daily, and would like to go and do likewise. Man you just got to love this stuff and it has some good tips to boot. Hi guys, I came across this the other day and thought it would go well on the site.