MRT have their digital map with one of the layers that can be chosen being one that shows historical mineral finds including alluvial gold (and tin), but what are people’s experiences with the alluvial gold finds - are there a lot more rivers and creeks with alluvial gold than are shown on their map, or have they pretty much captured every site that the old timers found alluvial gold? The map is here for those that haven’t seen it https://www.mrt.tas.gov.au/mrt_maps/app/list/map?bmlayer=3&srs=EPSG:4283&layers=920,873
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The MRT mineral locations dataset is not actually one of mineral occurrences but of mineral deposits. The important differentiation between occurrences and deposits is that (especially with alluvial occurences) for MRT to call something a deposit it must have either a defined deposit (duh) or historical workings.
This means some known gold bearing creeks are not shown in the database because there is no document that says there were old timer’s workings there. Modern exploration has stream sampled a significant percentage of prospective creeks in Tasmania but almost none of the anomalies produced (a good portion of which have noted visible gold in pan/rock) have made into into the MRT database due to that they represent an occurrence rather than a deposit. I’ve personally combed a huge amount of MRT’s documents (and Trove’s) and have created a personal database of gold bearing creeks which I use instead, which contains perhaps ~2 times more creeks than MRT’s, although the vast majority are tributaries that would logically be expected to be gold bearing.
As for the veracity of existing occurrences, most are pretty good, although a small handful cite documents that have directly contractionary information. Some also cite incredibly vague statements: “the land owner recalls his father reminiscing about some gold workings in the 30s”.
Basically, do your own research, MRT’s deposits is a good place to start but there’s a bit more to it, but nothing can beat time in the field.
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Many thanks qmot for that detailed explanation. As you said it looks like time in the field is going to find the gold.