A truly great site, Doc. Congratulations from all prospectors down under.

That Arizona country looks so geologically young that it's a wonder your feet dont fry on the still cooling basalt. I believe it is only around 10-15 million years old, would that be right ?.

If you can imagine hundreds of millions of years worth of weathering, oxidation, climatic changes, chemical leaching and lateritisation occuring in AZ , you could get a good idea what Western Australia is like.

Due to all of the above geological events occuring here, gold has been concentrated in patches where the required conditions are available for gold to concentrate. Whereas I suspect that in AZ you could find smallish patches of gold absolutely anywhere in that young volcanic rock.

The trumpet plants probably like a low Ph acidic soil, so they must be a very good mineralisation indicator for you. I wish we had such a nice red flag to lead us to gold areas !. But if I was prospecting in AZ or anywhere else for that matter, I would never rely on just the one indicator. I'll bet gold has been found in AZ where there are NO trumpet plants.

I couldn't see any sign of company exploration efforts in your AZ photo's . That kind of volcanic country here in Oz would certainly have been explored by various companies during the last 20 years or so. The old reef workings in your photo would have been close pattern drilled if they were here.

Once again, thanks for a great site.

Keep smiling,

Chris Hake.

• Re: More Pictures: Trumpet Plants, Nuggets, Gold Country and more for Chris and my friends here! hoss 05:33:33 1/31/99 (0)