Hard Rock Gold: My New Discoveries from the Australian Bush

The past few weeks have been an incredible prospecting journey. If you haven’t seen the updates I’ve shared in the community posts on YouTube, don’t worry—this video will take you through everything in detail. What I’ve found isn’t just another promising lead—it’s a proper hard rock gold discovery. But more than this, it started with a single hard rock gold discovery, but it’s now turned into a field with multiple sites that I can work. This is the new mine site I’ll be focusing on full-time once my crusher arrives in about two weeks. I actually broke my previous crusher about a month before I made this discovery, unfortunately, but it is what it is. So my brother will be taking over on the alluvial gold and silver mine that I’ve been working, and I’ll be focusing on this. I don’t mind working alluvial ground. But if I’m honest, my heart lies in hard rock. There’s a consistency to it that alluvial just can’t match. With alluvial, you're constantly chasing—new spots, new crevices, hoping today’s wash will be as good as yesterday’s. It’s a grind.

But with hard rock, once you’ve found the source, you can work it systematically. You can map it, sample it, and scale it up. You’re not just chasing gold—you’re developing a deposit. That’s what I love. It's more strategic, more geological, and more rewarding in the long run.

So from surface samples to confirmed gold-bearing structures, this spot has delivered more than I hoped for, and today I’ll show you exactly why this could be my most significant find yet.

This field wasn’t promising. In fact, I almost didn’t bother coming out here. It had a tiny, short-lived alluvial gold rush over a century ago, barely any official documentation, and no serious mention of hard rock potential. I figured I’d poke around since I was in the area after leaving a mate’s place, and maybe I’d find a bit of colour in the pan—but honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. Now I won’t be showing any shots of this field, ever. Tis a secret and a secret it shall remain. So, I’ll do little sketches instead and use AI to help me. I’m a rubbish drawer. But this’ll have to work.

When I got here, nothing stood out. The landscape looked average, the rock formations seemed familiar, and the main anticline—now the centre of this entire discovery—didn’t catch my eye at first. There’s a reason it didn’t look like a typical anticline, but I won’t say why as that would require me to describe the field. Anyway, quartz was barely visible in this area. There were no major veins, it was all just vertically tilted sedimentary rocks.

I have a tendency to stop and stare at one place for an elongated period of time whilst I run questions through my head when I go to a new area. I did this a few times, when I noticed a tiny, tinyyyyy stringer in the wall. It was smaller than a finger in width. But I took a sample and continued. When I got to the structure that I now realize was an anticline, I found my first proper strike of quartz. It was about 3cm in width. I figured I’d take a sample and head home. But before I did, I climbed the anticline and realized there was a far larger vein hiding beneath the soil cover here. The reason I knew that is because there were large detached pieces of quartz on the top. But along with this, there was a major amount of crisscrossed boxworks quarts on the middle to upper sections of the anticline. I took some samples of it all, bagged it all up, and left.

Before we continue, there’s a reason this excites me so much.

Anticline deposits are often referred to as saddle reef deposits, and for good reason—they form in the curved hinge zones of folded rocks, typically within quartz veins that follow the crest of the fold. These hinge zones, or ‘saddles’, are structurally ideal traps for gold-bearing fluids. During folding, intense pressure and deformation cause the rock to fracture and open up small voids right in the hinge of the anticline. These spaces become perfect pathways for hydrothermal fluids, which deposit quartz and, more importantly, gold.

What makes saddle reef deposits particularly exciting is their enrichment potential. Because the fold hinge concentrates fluid flow and traps minerals, these deposits often carry very high-grade gold. In fact, some of the richest historical hard rock mines in the world—like those in Bendigo and Ballarat, Australia—were built on saddle reef systems. They’re textbook examples of how structure controls mineralisation.

When I got home, I took a closer look at these detached pieces of quartz when I realized they were strewn with fine visible gold. This absolutely blew my mind.

But what came out of that first crush changed everything. I crushed 3 pieces about the size of a 20 cent Australian coin each. Visible gold—fine, flour gold—was sitting right there in the pan. And not just a little, around 100-200 pieces of fine gold came from 3 tiny samples. It was enough to stop me in my tracks. Amazingly my big expensive camera won’t actually capture the gold, but for some reason my phone does. Logic 101 right there. The gold is so fine, that gravity methods won’t capture it all, but that’s no problem, I’ll use chemicals to dissolve it all and precipitate it. The main thing is it’s damn abundant. Unfortunately I only have a jaw crusher, so I can’t grind it all to dust. Much of the gold is still sitting inside the pieces of quartz as you can see.

That one sample from the anticline lit the spark, and I started looking at the entire area through a different lens. I then sampled the boxworks structures, and even though the quartz was thin, some as thin as a sheet of paper, gold was carried throughout all of them.

I have to wait on my crusher to do a bulk sample before I can give you figures on how much gold this is per tonne, but I suspect this is a multiple ounce vein. Perhaps even bonanza grade.

But for the sake of it, let’s run through a rough calculation.

I crushed 3 pieces of rock, each about the size of an Australian 20c coin.

Each 20c coin is ~28 mm in diameter and weighs ~11 grams—but rock is less dense than metal, so:

Let's estimate each rock piece weighed about 20 grams, so total sample = ~60 grams.

I recovered 100–200 specks of fine gold, so we’ll estimate:

Each speck is ~0.01 mg to 0.05 mg (a conservative range).

Total gold weight estimate = 1 mg to 10 mg of gold.

Let’s estimate 10 mg gold from 60 g of rock

10mg divided by 60g, multiplied by 1,000,000 =166.7g/t or over 5 ounces a ton. This is all speculative of course at this early stage. But it’s a rough estimate. I know for a fact that I’m dealing with an ounce per ton reef system without a doubt. Hell, I’d work half an ounce per ton and still be happy.

This figure gets even more pronounced though when we factor in the fact that a lot of the gold is still tied in sulphides. Which leads me to the next point.

There are abundant shiny silver pieces that kept showing up in my crushed samples. I suspected it was arsenopyrite—and if that was the case, there was a good chance some of the gold was locked inside it. So I ran a small test roast to find out. The results confirmed it: it was arsenopyrite, and after roasting, the visible gold recovery noticeably increased.

But by far the best thing about this roast was it confirmed there was no antimony. Thank god. Antimony ore is perhaps the hardest refractory ore to process, and I was thankful it didn’t exist in my material. But in general, I’m dealing with a refractory ore here. There’s free gold, but there’s also quite a lot of gold bound in the sulphides. This, along with the fine size, might be why this deposit still exists untouched. What I love and hate about fine gold, is that you need to really know what you’re doing in order to extract it. It doesn’t conform to gravity, it doesn’t behave like gold is expected to behave, and special methods are needed to gather it all up. This is a blessing now, but it was a curse when I first got into processing this type of gold ore.

But what this means is my estimate is based on the free gold obtained from the sample. It hasn’t factored in the boost that occurs after gold is released from the arsenopyrite. So the figures could and probably will increase dramatically.

So after all of this, what followed was weeks of boots-on-ground work—sampling, mapping, testing every structure I could access. And one by one, the picture started coming together.

On my second trip to the field, I focused on a deeper geological assessment of the area. That’s when I noticed something significant: just meters from the first anticline was a syncline, sitting at the same structural level. This suggested intense compression—enough to raise the syncline up alongside the anticline. For reference this is a quote unquote normal anti-cline syncline complex.

The syncline itself was barren and lacked quartz, which wasn’t surprising. But it raised an important question: if an anticline–syncline pair exists this close together, what are the chances that more anticlines are present nearby? I figured the odds were high. So, I expanded my search.

I walked about a hundred meters when I noticed the rocks starting to fold again forming what was clearly another anticline. But here’s the kicker: right next to it… was another anticline. No syncline in between. Just two anticlines side by side.

That completely threw me. Was this a parasitic fold? Some kind of structural interference pattern? What the hell happened here? This wasn’t textbook—it was something more complex. And I knew I had to figure it out.

To be honest, I still haven’t answered that question. It’s possible there’s a very tight syncline wedged between the two anticlines—either too small to spot in the field or buried under talus and sediment. These anticlines weren’t as well exposed as the first one, so something being hidden is definitely on the table. I plan to return for more detailed mapping when time allows. But if there’s no syncline there, then yeah—we’re probably looking at a parasitic fold. Either way, it tells me this area has been through some serious structural deformation.

What I noticed was that the main anticline contained stringers and small quartz veins. Nothing substantial, but the supposed parasitic fold, contained an abundance of quartz shedding from the main vein. I would later locate the main vein after climbing the boxthorn strewn hills, but at this point, I just gathered talus and took it home to crush it. It yielded gold. Not as rich as the first anticline, but rich enough for me to work.

Since my prediction about more anticlines turned out to be spot on, I figured I’d keep going. About 200 meters from that last spot, I came across a clearly defined syncline in the landscape. This one was different—it actually had quartz veins running through it. I took a sample home, crushed it, and to my surprise, it also yielded gold.

That really caught me off guard. I didn’t expect a syncline to host gold, because structurally, anticlines are usually the better traps for hydrothermal fluids. Synclines tend to be more compressed and less permeable, so finding gold here suggested that the mineralising fluids were moving more freely through the entire fold system than I’d assumed. That shifted my thinking completely.

Just to the left of the syncline was a much more pronounced anticline. Getting to it, though, was a real mission—thick with boxthorn, and of course, I didn’t bring anything to hack a path through. So, I just sucked it up and pushed my way in. After a painful crawl through the thorny mess, I made it—and it was absolutely worth it.

This anticline had more pronounced quartz veining than even the first one. It was genuinely beautiful—especially in a field where finding decent quartz is so damn rare. I took a sample home, crushed it, and boom—gold. That was the third confirmed gold-bearing site in this area.

So now I’m looking at a field that, for whatever reason, was completely overlooked during the gold rush. Multiple folded structures, consistent quartz veining, and confirmed gold across several points—and no real record of anyone ever working it. Unreal.

Before we move on, it’s worth mentioning that I pushed about 50 meters past that last anticline and came across a talus deposit. Sitting right there was a piece of quartz with visible gold. I took it home, crushed it—and it was absolutely strewn with gold.

The source vein is high up on the slope, buried somewhere beyond an even thicker wall of boxthorn than the one I’d just braved. I haven’t been able to reach it yet, but you can bet I will. There’s no way I’m leaving a vein like that untracked.

So now we leave the anticlines behind and turn our attention to something that stood out from the start—a strangely steep hill nestled right between anticline 1 and anticline 2. Given its position, sandwiched between two confirmed gold-bearing folds, it definitely warranted a closer look.

I followed a path cut into the hillside, climbing up to about the midpoint. I was scanning the area, hoping to spot any sign of quartz—but all I saw was sedimentary rubble. Then I spotted it: a solid chunk of quartz, around 7 cm wide, just lying there. This is way larger than the quartz typical of the area. I marked the spot, took it home, crushed it—and was blown away. The amount of gold in that one piece was on par with what I pulled from the first anticline: around 100 to 200 fine gold particles. That was no fluke.

But tracking down the source? That was a nightmare. I made multiple trips back, climbed to the top of the hill, searched every direction, and all I found was quartz that had clearly been washed down. Nothing in place. I started noticing a pattern though—most of the quartz seemed to stop around three quarters of the way up the hill. The summit was bare. So, I marked the upper limit, marked where I’d found the float, and started combing the slope for any sign of outcrop.

Eventually, I found four separate quartz outcrops, scattered below that line. Weirdly, they were in relative succession. This will make sense later. I sampled them all. The first two tests came back… decent. Around 50–100 specks of gold again, which, honestly, is great. don’t get me wrong, at this point I’m used to seeing 100-200 pieces of gold from tiny amounts of quartz. This quote unquote “average amount” would’ve left me ecstatic only weeks prior, but I wanted to find where the hell that large piece of quartz came from. I was obsessed with finding the source of that big chunk. I wanted the vein.

I kept coming back, frustration building each time—until finally, I found it. Just the tiniest sliver of quartz poking out of the ground. I crushed a sample, and hallelujah—that was it. I’d found the source of the rich float.

But here’s the twist. I thought I was chasing a single rich reef, one isolated vein. What I didn’t realise is that I’d completely misunderstood the bigger picture. Yesterday, I went back and decided to dig down on that spot. As I exposed more of the quartz, something clicked: all four outcrops I’d sampled earlier—they lined up.

Ohhh… this isn’t a single reef. This is a line of reef.

So, what’s a line of reef? It’s a structurally controlled series of quartz veins that follow the same geological trend—usually along a fault, shear zone, or fold axis. Instead of one isolated gold-bearing vein, you’re looking at a sequence of parallel or en echelon veins, sometimes extending for hundreds of meters. That changes everything. It means this system could have scale, continuity, and multiple high-grade pockets—hidden just beneath the surface. This explains why the grade varied. But not only that, once I realized it was a line of reef, I started following it and I found 2 additional outcrops of quartz that I’d completely missed. One of them had a very large vein, larger than I’ve previously seen. I’m still yet to sample these two.

So at this point, as of today, I have 4 confirmed sources of gold, with a fifth I’ve yet to put the legwork in to find. I’m very, very lucky to have found this. Even with geological knowledge, this is mainly just luck. For whatever reason, I drove to the right spot, and I struck gold, literally.

This is my new hard rock mine, and I’m already in the process of claiming the area. I’ve bagged up quartz to send out for assay, and I’ve been spending my days collecting as much ore as my poor car can carry. After I made my initial find, the efforts have, as you can tell, been more about finding how far the extent of the gold enrichment spread. I’ve covered the field, so now I’ve shifted to collecting ore. Though I do plan on searching for that fifth spot at this point.

So here’s the procedure I’m going to follow to actually recover the gold when the new crusher arrives. First, I’ll crush the ore, soak it, and use a leaching solution to dissolve the gold. Then I’ll precipitate it out of solution. Pretty standard so far. But after that, the leftover crushed ore goes into a secondary tank—this one’s packed with bacteria.

Bacteria, you say? Yucky. I know, right? But hear me out. This isn’t just any ore—we’re dealing with high levels of arsenopyrite. And I’ve confirmed that it’s holding a good portion of the gold. To get that gold out, I need to break the arsenopyrite down. That’s where the bacteria come in.

I’ve looked at several options to break down the arsenopyrite. The quickest and simplest would be roasting the ore, which oxidises the arsenopyrite and releases the gold. But now that I’m working at a production scale, that methods off the table. Roasting gives off toxic gases—especially arsenic—and I’m not about to pollute the environment or put my neighbours at risk just to extract gold. That would be selfish, irresponsible, and honestly, a disgusting way to operate.

So I’ll be using bioleaching instead. It’s a slower process, but far cleaner and much safer. The bacteria I’ll be using are naturally occurring and specially selected to break down sulphide minerals like arsenopyrite. As they do their work, the locked-in gold is gradually released, making it accessible for recovery without the need for high temperatures or toxic emissions.

It takes patience, but if I want to do this properly—and sustainably—this is the way forward. Cleaner for me, safer for the environment and more importantly, for my neighbours, and it still gets the gold out.

So, this whole journey has been absolutely fascinating. It’s really scratched that itch—the part of me that’s always wanted to see what the old timers saw and feel what they experienced. A line of reefs, saddle reef-style deposits… it’s all here, hiding in plain sight.

For me, this isn’t just about gold—it’s about connecting with the history, the geology, and the raw excitement of discovery. I hope you found this as exhilarating and eye-opening as I did. And trust me, this is only the beginning.

Here's the video I made on this on the OzGeology YouTube channel: