Debunking the Glacier Gold Myth in Reedy Creek

Was Reedy Creek Really Covered By Glaciers?

In the hills of North-Eastern Victoria, Reedy Creek is a well-known goldfield that has long been a magnet for gold prospectors. For decades, some have claimed that the gold in the area was deposited by glaciers — a persistent local myth that imagines ancient ice sheets bulldozing chunks of gold across the land and dropping them into the creek. It’s an intriguing idea and a fun story to imagine. But this is incorrect. The geologic truth paints a very different — and even more fascinating — picture. In this article, we’ll debunk the glacier transport myth and uncover what really formed Reedy Creek’s gold deposits.

Reedy Creek’s golden story truly began in the fevered days of the 1850s gold rush.

In February 1852, a shepherd named William Howell, working for the Reid family, reportedly discovered “payable” gold in what was then called Reid’s Creek. At the time, this name referred to a stretch of the waterway we now know as Reedy Creek, near the upper Woolshed Valley.

This discovery sparked the Ovens Gold Rush, and hopeful miners flooded the area. 

Amid this fervor, early miners weren’t too concerned with how the gold got there – they only cared that it was there. Understandably. But as the alluvial easy-pickings dwindled and scientific curiosity grew, people started wondering: Where did all this gold actually come from? Over time, the mix of materials in Reedy Creek’s gravels gave rise to speculation. Along with gold, miners were pulling out black sand tin ore, bright zircon and sapphire, even small diamonds from the creek. They also encountered oddly assorted rocks – white quartz, granite pieces, and other “foreign” stones – including some boulders with glacial scratches on them. Such clues led to an imaginative theory: perhaps a long-ago glacier had carried gold and exotic minerals from afar into the Reedy Creek valley. Thus the legend of “glacial gold” was born, gaining traction in local folk wisdom.

Glacial Clues in the Landscape (and Why They Mislead)

It’s true that Reedy Creek’s surrounds hold evidence of ancient ice – but this needs careful untangling. Geological surveys have identified Permian glacial deposits cropping out near Woorragee, in the headwaters region northeast of Beechworth. These deposits date back about 280 million years, when Australia was part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana and lay closer to the South Pole. The glacial deposit at Woorragee is a clayey conglomerate known as till, containing a jumble of rounded pebbles and cobbles of various rock types (sandstone, quartzite, granite, etc.) embedded in stiff clay. Early miners, puzzled by this strange blue-gray boulder clay underlying the gravels, dubbed it the “blue glacier” layer. In fact, geologist E.J. Dunn in 1887 noted distinct striations (scratches) on boulders from this layer – a telltale sign they had been dragged by ice. The presence of this ancient glacial layer is not a myth at all; it’s a real geological feature, proof that glaciers once visited the region.

However, the leap from “there was a glacier here” to “the glacier brought the gold here” is where the science says no. For one, the age mismatch is glaring. Reedy Creek’s gold is found in relatively young river gravels and alluvial terraces – sediments of Tertiary age (tens of millions of years old at most) and Quaternary age (recent geologic time) that lie along the valley. The glacial till, on the other hand, is Permian (~260–300 million years old), buried and preserved by faulting in pockets of the landscape. By the time rivers were laying down the gold-rich gravels, the glaciers had been gone for hundreds of millions of years. In other words, the timing doesn’t add up to have glaciers actively ferrying gold during the era the alluvial deposits formed.

Secondly, glaciers are not gold concentrators – if anything, they are gold dispersers. An ice sheet ploughing over gold-bearing rock will grind and spread material in a chaotic fashion. It may carry nuggets and sand great distances, but when the ice melts, the load is dumped haphazardly, usually yielding low-grade, mixed deposits. In contrast, Reedy Creek’s gold proved rich enough in certain spots to be worked profitably for decades, even with primitive methods. This points to the selective winnowing action of water. Flowing water sorts sediments by density, gradually concentrating heavy particles like gold into pay streaks on bedrock or inside gravel bars. A glacier simply doesn’t perform that kind of delicate sluicing; it’s more of a bulldozer than a gold pan. So while a glacier could have dropped a little gold into the mix, it wouldn’t have concentrated ounces and ounces of fine gold along a stretch of creek – but the creek itself (through regular stream processes) definitely would and definitely did.

Now, at first glance, this certainly sounds like glaciers were here. But we need to look carefully at what’s actually described.

It’s important to note that the belief that Reedy Creek contained glaciers dates back to a geological report written by E.J. Dunn in 1887.

Dunn reported striations on pebbles and boulders, not on the underlying bedrock itself. In other words, he observed striated clasts, not striated pavements. That’s a crucial distinction.

Because if a glacier had physically overridden the Reedy Creek valley, we would expect to find:

• Striated or grooved bedrock surfaces in situ
• Continuous lodgment till sheets lying directly on bedrock
• Possibly drumlins or other subglacial landforms

But none of these features are present in Reedy Creek’s headwaters or valley system.

Instead, what we see are glacially influenced sediments — reworked from upstream or basin-margin environments. The striated pebbles and boulders were eroded from older glacial till and transported into place by meltwater or ice rafting, not dropped by a glacier that physically advanced through the area.

So yes, the materials were shaped by glacial activity — but the glacier itself wasn’t here.

Here’s our next clue. Rather than direct glacial deposits, the Reedy Creek valley at Eldorado is flanked by ancient glaciomarine and fluvial sediments — including diamictite, sandstone, mudstone, and conglomerate. These layers were deposited during the Permian ice age, not by the glacier itself bulldozing the valley, but by meltwater flows and ice rafting from nearby glaciers into a shallow marine or marginal basin. In other words, the area that is now Reedy Creek once served as a depositional center for glacially influenced sediment — a low-lying basin where meltwater and ice-rafted debris accumulated.

In this setting, floating ice dropped debris, while sediment-laden meltwater laid down interbedded sands and muds. So while Reedy Creek wasn’t carved or overridden by glacial ice, it lies within a basin shaped by glacial processes operating at a distance. This means the creek’s surrounding geology records the fingerprints of ancient ice, without having been directly touched by it.

It turns out the “exotic” clues – the glacial striated stones, and even those tiny diamonds – have an explanation that fits without invoking an ice-age gold train. The ancient Permian glacier did leave behind a grab-bag of rocks and minerals in its till. Much later, as Reedy Creek and its tributaries cut through the landscape, they eroded bits of that glacial deposit and washed its contents into the alluvial gravels. This is why prospectors might find a stray far-traveled agate or a diamond in the same pan as local gold. In fact, geologists note that many of the gemstones in Reedy Creek’s placers (zircon, sapphire, tiny diamonds) were likely transported into the goldfield via Permian glacial sediments farther east. Those gems did not originate in the local bedrock; the glacier brought them from who-knows-where and left them hidden in ancient clay, only to be re-eroded into the creek eons later. Gold, however, tells a different story – one rooted firmly in the local geology of Reedy Creek’s own neighborhood.

The True Origins: Home-Grown Gold in Reedy Creek

So if glaciers weren’t the source, what actually formed the rich gold deposits of Reedy Creek? The answer is the same as for most goldfields across Victoria — the gold came from quartz veins injected into the local bedrock during ancient mountain-building events. Reedy Creek’s surrounding hills are made of folded Ordovician sedimentary rocks, intruded by Devonian granites and related dykes. During this time — hundreds of millions of years ago — hot, mineral-rich fluids circulated through fractures in the Earth’s crust, depositing gold within quartz veins. These were the “mother lodes,” and over time, weathering and erosion wore down the hills, freeing the gold. Because gold is so dense, it didn’t travel far — it accumulated in nearby creeks and gullies, including Reedy Creek. By the late Tertiary, around 20–30 million years ago, ancient rivers carved valleys and deposited gold-rich alluvial gravels, some of which later became deep leads, buried beneath layers of sediment. In the 19th and 20th centuries, these gravels were mined and dredged — not because of glacial delivery, but because rivers had consistently sorted and concentrated the gold over time.

Reedy Creek’s gravels also held another surprise: cassiterite, or tin ore. The black sand that built up with the gold contained tin washed down from granite outcrops in the surrounding ranges. This made Reedy Creek one of Victoria’s most important tin producers — with over 9,900 tonnes of cassiterite recovered, mostly as a by-product of gold mining. The gold and tin were both liberated by erosion, not glaciers, and concentrated by flowing water — the same simple but powerful process seen across Victoria’s gold-bearing streams.

It's important to note that most of the gold deposits in Reedy Creek only became exposed at the surface within the last 20 to 30 million years, during the late Tertiary. These veins were emplaced at depths of approximately 3 to 10 kilometres, far below the ancient surface. Over hundreds of millions of years, the region was slowly uplifted and eroded, gradually stripping away the overlying rock. It wasn’t until relatively recently, geologically speaking, that erosion had progressed enough to finally expose those deep-seated quartz veins at the surface — allowing natural weathering and flowing water to begin liberating the gold and carrying it into nearby creeks, including Reedy Creek. In fact, the paleorivers that once flowed through the Reedy Creek valley — the same ancient channels that miners later worked for gold — are themselves around 10 million years old, dating to the Late Miocene. These rivers developed long after the gold had formed deep underground and after much of the landscape had already been uplifted and eroded. By the time these rivers existed, erosion had finally exposed gold-bearing quartz veins at the surface, allowing natural weathering and stream activity to begin releasing gold into the alluvial system. These paleochannels are what we now refer to as deep leads — buried, gold-rich riverbeds that captured the product of hundreds of millions of years of erosion, but only began to function as active gold carriers in the geologically recent past.

*The Map Above Shows Deep Leads in the area: Green & Yellow

And what about those diminutive diamonds found in Reedy Creek? Over 300 diamonds (mostly small, under half a carat) were recorded during alluvial mining of the creek between Wooragee and Eldorado. The largest reached 6 and 8.2 carats – a miner’s delight, no doubt, but still geologically perplexing for a region with no known volcanic kimberlite pipes. The consensus is that these diamonds were carried into the area by ancient processes. Geological sleuthing suggests two possibilities: Permian glacial drift as mentioned earlier, or weathering of rare lamprophyre dykes in the region which have been hinted as a potential diamond source. In either case, the diamonds are incidental guests in Reedy Creek’s gravels. They add sparkle to the story, but they do not indicate that Reedy’s gold traveled with them. In fact, most diamonds were found mixed in “deep lead” gravels and streams that drained the Pilot Range granite massifs, whereas the majority of the gold came from different directions – notably from the quartz reef country to the south of Beechworth. The gold and the gems had distinct origins, even if the creek eventually mingled them together.

Myth Versus Science: Wrapping Up the Tale

When we contrast the legend with the science, the picture becomes clear. The idea of glaciers delivering gold to Reedy Creek is a classic case of a plausible-sounding tale that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Yes, ancient glaciers were here (long, long ago) and they left their calling cards in the form of mixed-up clays and striated stones. Those glaciers even helped by seeding the area with a few diamonds and pretty agates. But the gold that made Reedy Creek famous needed no long-distance ice age carrier. It was born locally, in the quartz veins of Beechworth’s hills and was delivered to the creek by the everyday work of weathering rock and flowing water.

Interestingly, this true story is every bit as dramatic as a glacier dragging riches across continents. Consider the span of time and forces involved: mountain-building that emplaced gold veins deep underground; relentless erosion that freed the gold grain by grain; ancient rivers that concentrated those grains into rich pockets; and even the chance inclusion of gems from a glacier that froze and melted before the age of dinosaurs. By the time the first gold rush miners camped on Reedy Creek in 1852, geologic history had already written a complex script for the landscape – a script that scientists continue to decipher. Each layer of gravel or clay is a page in that deep-time story.

Finally, we return to the present, where Reedy Creek still sparkles on a sunny day, and amateur gold seekers still swish pans in its waters. The tale they’ve heard might be of a benevolent glacier delivering the gold. But now we know: the gold was always here, waiting for discovery, woven into the fabric of the land itself. The real formation of Reedy Creek’s gold deposits is a story of fire (in the form of quartz veins), water (from rivers and floods), and time, rather than ice. And as a blend of formal geological truth and local legend, Reedy Creek’s story shows how science can reveal an even more wondrous reality than the myths – no glaciers required.

Here's the video we made on this on the OzGeology YouTube Channel: