Aussie Gold Finds

on the outskirts of Maryborough, Victoria:
my sons, after we found a marker, where our ancestors (the RICE Brothers) found a 537-ounce nugget in January 1858 -




in 1854, the RICE Brothers found an 80-oz nugget on the ground, near where Maryborough was subsequently established.

This story pertains to the cairn above (second try at this story)

Some information on Peter's ancestor's
(hope you don't mind Peter)

Geraldon Guardian Mar 8 th 1921

Mrs Alice Rice,who died recently at Maryborough,Victoria,was born in County Carlow,Ireland,in 1842,and came to Australia in 1854,which made her a colonist of 79 years.
She married the late Mr Thomas Rice,who opened the Maryborough diggings by discovering gold on the 4 th and the 5 th of June 1854,at a place near the bridge on the Avoca road.
Mrs Rice came to Maryborough in 1857,and as a record of the early days of Maryborough she recalled an episode worth chronicling,living in a tent at Blackman Lead in the early part of 1858 she was washing and preparing dinner,and whilst inside the tent her brother-in-law dropped a 537 oz nugget in the tub amongst the cloth she had just washed.
She was also present at the opening of the Inglewood goldfield and other places,going to inglewood proved rather an unlucky venture,as through being there they missed seeing the notice in the Government Gazette giving a grant for the discovery of new goldfields.
Latter they made an application but it proved futile due to the lapse in time between the discovery and the application,and no government reward was paid for the discovery of Maryborough goldfield.

footnote (1921) to date the nugget found by Alice's brother-in-law is the 43 rd largest ever found in Victoria also it was found at a depth of 6 feet on the 15 th Jan 1858.

there you go Peter not only did your ancestors find a big nugget they also discovered the Maryborough and Inglewood goldfields WTG Peters Ancestors

O.K just a little more gold from W.A.also 2 photo's that I couldn't upload until now,one you have seen the other I only talked about till now but first the W.A. gold



This is the Flint Lock Pistol I spoke about earlier in this thread.



This nugget doe's look better in hand,this is back on page 11.




there was another photo of the hand full of nuggets from W.A.
but it just won't down load from photobucket so if you need to see it I'll give you the address but only if you ask for it.
so don't forget to swing low and slow and be safe

Oh P.S. the Flint Lock is now restored

Well don't just say something sit there

Yes all the mates and I do use acid to clean the gold up,anything with ironstone or quartz on it I use sulfuric or fluronitric acid or something like it and leave for a few weeks shaking the bottle every day,I only use one acid at a time and if you combine two acids you could end up with aqua fura which dissolves gold and it's a dame nuisance trying to reconstitute it again oh and thanks for the visit Ben.
don't forget to swing low and slow
and be safe.

I don't know how much reserch you do but here we have reference maps with the actual gold streems shown this isn't one of them,
I'll post one with the streems shown on a latter date,
Most of our detecting is done in State Forests this will give you a scope on the avalible land for detecting.

Soon there will be more to come